Kawasaki dynamics with two types of particles: stable/metastable configurations and communication heights

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the metastable behavior of a two-type particle lattice gas under Kawasaki dynamics, focusing on critical droplet geometry and energy, extending understanding from single to multi-type systems at low temperature.

Contribution

It proves the energy and shape of critical droplets for a two-type particle system, advancing the understanding of metastability in multi-type particle dynamics.

Findings

Identified the energy of critical droplets.

Analyzed the geometric properties of droplets.

Extended metastability analysis to multi-type systems.

Abstract

This is the second in a series of three papers in which we study a two-dimensional lattice gas consisting of two types of particles subject to Kawasaki dynamics at low temperature in a large finite box with an open boundary. Each pair of particles occupying neighboring sites has a negative binding energy provided their types are different, while each particle has a positive activation energy that depends on its type. There is no binding energy between particles of the same type. At the boundary of the box particles are created and annihilated in a way that represents the presence of an infinite gas reservoir. We start the dynamics from the empty box and are interested in the transition time to the full box. This transition is triggered by a critical droplet appearing somewhere in the box. In the first paper we identified the parameter range for which the system is metastable, showed that the first entrance distribution on the set of critical droplets is uniform, computed the expected transition time up to and including a multiplicative factor of order one, and proved that the nucleation time divided by its expectation is exponentially distributed, all in the limit of low temperature. These results were proved under three hypotheses, and involve three model-dependent quantities: the energy, the shape and the number of critical droplets. In this second paper we prove the first and the second hypothesis and identify the energy of critical droplets. The paper deals with understanding the geometric properties of subcritical, critical and supercritical droplets, which are crucial in determining the metastable behavior of the system. The geometry turns out to be considerably more complex than for Kawasaki dynamics with one type of particle, for which an extensive literature exists. The main motivation behind our work is to understand metastability of multi- type particle systems.