NOVEL CRITICAL-BEHAVIOR IN INHOMOGENEOUS SYSTEMS

The effect of inhomogeneous couplings on the scaling behavior in criti cal phenomena is considered using renormalization group analysis, Mont e Carlo simulations, and other numerical tests. Novel scaling relation ships result from nonuniform perturbations of a uniform fixed point at criticality. An effective dimension entering scaling equalities is el ucidated. Nonuniversal behavior is found in fully connected systems wi th exchange couplings arrayed in a hierarchical manner.