Stripe melting in a two-dimensional system with competing interactions.

A model with competing short-ranged attractions and long-ranged repulsions that describes self-organized patterns in systems like Langmuir monolayers, magnetic films, and adsorbed monolayers is studied using numerical simulations and analytic theory. Simulations provide strong evidence confirming that the stripe phase order is destroyed in a defect unbinding transition. Large scale computer simulations are in agreement with an analytic scaling theory, which also predicts an eventual crossover from defect-mediated stripe melting to a spin-disordering (or particle-mixing) mechanism with decreasing repulsion strength.