Magnitude of the prewetting boundary tension near wetting for short-range forces

Abstract

We determine in a mean field approximation the spin-1/2 Ising model line tension τ along the boundary between surface states at the prewetting transition in the neighborhood of the wetting transition at bulk phase coexistence. We find very close agreement with the predictions of the interface displacement model for short-range interactions, i.e., τ increases (with a square-root dependence on the bulk external field h) towards a finite limit with diverging slope at wetting. Our findings help both in settling the discussion on the limiting value of τ and in understanding the origin of its singular behavior.