Interrupted coarsening in the zero-temperature kinetic Ising chain driven by a periodic external field

TL;DR

This paper studies how a rapidly oscillating external field can interrupt the coarsening process in a zero-temperature 1D Ising chain, revealing complex multi-scale correlations.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of interrupted coarsening under periodic driving and analyzes the resulting nontrivial correlations both analytically and numerically.

Findings

Coarsening can be halted by a strong periodic field.

Multiple length scales emerge at the threshold field.

Correlation functions show complex behavior at the transition.

Abstract

If quenched to zero temperature, the one-dimensional Ising spin chain undergoes coarsening, whereby the density of domain walls decays algebraically in time. We show that this coarsening process can be interrupted by exerting a rapidly oscillating periodic field with enough strength to compete with the spin-spin interaction. By analyzing correlation functions and the distribution of domain lengths both analytically and numerically, we observe nontrivial correlation with more than one length scale at the threshold field strength.