Random-field models for relaxor ferroelectric behavior

Heat bath Monte Carlo simulations have been used to study a four-state clock model with a type of random field on simple cubic lattices. The model has the standard nonrandom two-spin exchange term with coupling energy J and a random field that consists of adding an energy D to one of the four-spin states, chosen randomly at each site. This Ashkin-Teller-like model does not separate; the two random-field Ising model components are coupled. When D/J=3, the ground states of the model remain fully aligned. When D/Jgreater than or equal to4, a different type of ground state is found, in which the occupation of two of the four-spin states is close to 50%, and the other two are nearly absent. This means that one of the Ising components is almost completely ordered, while the other one has only short-range correlations. A large peak in the structure factor S(k) appears at small k for temperatures well above the transition to long-range order, and the appearance of this peak is associated with slow, glassy dynamics. The phase transition into the state where one Ising component is long-range ordered appears to be first order, but the latent heat is very small.