The phase diagram of the two-dimensional Blume-Capel model with a random crystal field is investigated within the framework of a real-space renormalization-group approximation. Our results suggest that, for any amount of randomness, the model exhibits a line of Ising-like continuous transitions, as in the pure model, but no first-order transition. At zero temperature the transition is also continuous, but not in the same universality class as the Ising model. In this limit, the attractor (in the renormalization-group sense) is the percolation fixed point of the site diluted spin-1/2 Ising model. The results we found are in qualitative agreement with general predictions made by Berker and Hui on the critical behavior of random models.

• Received 7 April 1997

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.56.11673