Phase diagram of a system of hard cubes on the cubic lattice

Abstract: We study the phase diagram of a system of $2\times2\times2$ hard cubes on a three dimensional cubic lattice. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we show that the system exhibits four different phases as the density of cubes is increased: disordered, layered, sublattice ordered, and columnar ordered. In the layered phase, the system spontaneously breaks up into parallel slabs of size $2\times L \times L$ where only a very small fraction cubes do not lie wholly within a slab. Within each slab, the cubes are disordered; translation symmetry is thus broken along exactly one principal axis. In the solid-like sublattice ordered phase, the hard cubes preferentially occupy one of eight sublattices of the cubic lattice, breaking translational symmetry along all three principal directions. In the columnar phase, the system spontaneously breaks up into weakly interacting parallel columns of size $2\times 2\times L$ where only a very small fraction cubes do not lie wholly within a column. Within each column, the system is disordered, and thus translational symmetry is broken only along two principal directions. Using finite size scaling, we show that the disordered-layered phase transition is continuous, while the layered-sublattice and sublattice-columnar transitions are discontinuous. We construct a Landau theory written in terms of the layering and columnar order parameters, which is able to describe the different phases that are observed in the simulations and the order of the transitions. Additionally, our results near the disordered-layered transition are consistent with the $O(3)$ universality class perturbed by cubic anisotropy as predicted by the Landau theory.