Equilibrium wetting phase transitions and critical phenomena are discussed from a phenomenological point of view. The ubiquitous character of the wetting phase transition is illustrated through its occurrence in a variety of condensed matter systems, ranging from classical fluids to...

Recent studies introduced biased (degree-dependent) edge percolation as a model for failures in real-life systems. In this work, such process is applied to networks consisting of two types of nodes with edges running only between nodes of unlike type. Such bipartite graphs appear in many social...

In this Note a social network model for opinion formation is proposed in which a person connected to q partners pays an attention 1/q to each partner. The mutual attention between two connected persons i and j is taken equal to the geometric mean 1/qiqj. Opinion is represented as usual by an...

A simulation approach to the stochastic growth of bacterial towers is presented, in which a non-uniform and finite nutrient supply essentially determines the emerging structure through elementary chemotaxis. The method is based on cellular automata and we use simple, microscopic, local rules for...

We study marginal forms on the borderline between Euclidean shapes and fractals. The fractal dimension equals the topological dimension. The fractal measure features a logarithmic correction factor, leading to a linear divergence of the area or length upon increasing the resolution instead of...

The prediction of van Leeuwen and Hauge of a non-universal exponent associated with the critical wetting transition in type-I superconductors is verified by numerical solution of the Ginzburg–Landau equations. Using their interface potential we also compare analytic and numerical results for...

We predict on the basis of the Ginzburg-Landau theory that a type-I superconductor can exhibit an interface delocalization or “wetting” transition, in which a macroscopically thick superconducting layer intrudes from the surface into the bulk normal phase. The condition for this transition...

The effective interface potential V for nucleation of a superconducting surface layer in superconductors is derived as a function of the expelled magnetic moment M. We show that the associated variational problem with integral constraint is soluble, in contrast with the case of adsorbed fluids,...

We derive a wall-interface potential V(Γ) for wetting phenomena, through minimization of the surface free energy under the constraint of fixed adsorption Γ. We show that the upper bound VBILB (Γ), previously proposed by Bukman et al. [Phys. Rev. B 47 (1993) 1577], is not the minimum. The...

We study the transition zone or contact line between a thin film and bulk liquid, and calculate the line tension τ, employing an interface displacement model equivalent to Derjaguin's and de Gennes' approach. We investigate the behaviour of τ in the limit that the contact angle ϑ tends to...