planar ordering in the plaquette-only gonihedric ising model

In this paper we conduct a careful multicanonical simulation of the isotropic 3d plaquette (“gonihedric”) Ising model and confirm that a planar, fuki-nuke type order characterises the low-temperature phase of the model. From consideration of the anisotropic limit of the model we define a class of order parameters which can distinguish the low- and high-temperature phases in both the anisotropic and isotropic cases. We also verify the recently voiced suspicion that the order parameter like behaviour of the standard magnetic susceptibility χm seen in previous Metropolis simulations was an artefact of the algorithm failing to explore the phase space of the macroscopically degenerate low-temperature phase. χm is therefore not a suitable order parameter for the model.