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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 89 » Issue 3
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 035502 (2002) [4 pages]

Tetra Point Wetting at the Free Surface of Liquid Ga-Bi

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P. Huber1, O. G. Shpyrko1, P. S. Pershan1, B. M. Ocko2, E. DiMasi2, and M. Deutsch3
1Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
2Department of Physics, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973
3Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel

Received 13 April 2002; published 28 June 2002

A continuous surface wetting transition, pinned to a solid-liquid-liquid-vapor tetra coexistence point, is studied by x-ray reflectivity in liquid Ga-Bi binary alloys. The short-range surface potential is determined from the measured temperature evolution of the wetting film. The thermal fluctuations are shown to be insufficient to induce a noticeable breakdown of mean-field behavior, expected in short-range-interacting systems due to their du = 3 upper critical dimensionality.

© 2002 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.89.035502
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.89.035502
PACS:
61.25.Mv, 61.10.-i, 68.03.-g
 
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