Parallel Tempering Monte Carlo Studies of Phase Transition of Free Boundary Planar Surfaces

We numerically study surface models defined on hexagonal disks with a free boundary. 2D surface models for planar surfaces have recently attracted interest due to the engineering applications of functional materials such as graphene and its composite with polymers. These 2D composite meta-materials are strongly influenced by external stimuli such as thermal fluctuations if they are sufficiently thin. For this reason, it is very interesting to study the shape stability/instability of thin 2D materials against thermal fluctuations. In this paper, we study three types of surface models including Landau-Ginzburg (LG) and Helfirch-Polyakov models defined on triangulated hexagonal disks using the parallel tempering Monte Carlo simulation technique. We find that the planar surfaces undergo a first-order transition between the smooth and crumpled phases in the LG model and continuous transitions in the other two models. The first-order transition is relatively weak compared to the transition on spherical surfaces already reported. The continuous nature of the transition is consistent with the reported results, although the transitions are stronger than that of the reported ones.