Coarsening and percolation in a disordered ferromagnet

TL;DR

This paper investigates how quenched disorder affects phase-ordering kinetics in a 2D ferromagnetic Ising model, revealing the formation and evolution of percolation structures during coarsening.

Contribution

It demonstrates that quenched disorder influences the formation and evolution of percolation structures in phase-ordering, extending understanding beyond the non-disordered case.

Findings

Critical percolation structures form early in the process

Disorder causes these structures to become more compact over time

Results align with a dynamical scaling framework

Abstract

By studying numerically the phase-ordering kinetics of a two-dimensional ferromagnetic Ising model with quenched disorder -- either random bonds or random fields -- we show that a critical percolation structure forms in an early stage and is then progressively compactified by the ensuing coarsening process. Results are compared with the non-disordered case, where a similar phenomenon is observed, and interpreted within a dynamical scaling framework.