Scaling anomaly at the critical transition of an incommensurate structure

Abstract
We study the critical behavior of a Frenkel-Kontorova model, extended to include a second harmonic of the external potential. For certain parameter values of the model the transition from the locked to the sliding incommensurate phase shows a scaling anomaly for the correlation length, with the critical exponent varying with the potential. We conjecture that this behavior indicates a crossover to a new universality class.

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