Anisotropy induced by impurities of “random local field” type in O(n) models and suppression of the Imry–Ma inhomogeneous state

Abstract

It is shown that in a system with anisotropic distribution of the impurity-induced random local field directions in the n-dimensional space of a vector order parameter with the O(n) symmetry, the impurityinduced effective anisotropy arises for the space dimensionality 2 < d < 4. If the anisotropy constant exceeds the threshold value, then an inhomogeneous state predicted by Imry and Ma becomes energetically unfavorable, and the system goes back to a state with the long-range order.