Macroscopic Degeneracy and order in the 3d plaquette Ising model

Abstract: The purely plaquette 3d Ising Hamiltonian with the spins living at the vertices of a cubic lattice displays several interesting features. The symmetries of the model lead to a macroscopic degeneracy of the low-temperature phase and prevent the definition of a standard magnetic order parameter. Consideration of the strongly anisotropic limit of the model suggests that a layered, "fuki-nuke" order still exists and we confirm this with multicanonical simulations. The macroscopic degeneracy of the low-temperature phase also changes the finite-size scaling corrections at the first-order transition in the model and we see this must be taken into account when analysing our measurements.