Slow quench dynamics in classical systems: kinetic Ising model and zero-range process

TL;DR

This paper investigates the slow quench dynamics in classical models like the kinetic Ising model and zero-range process, deriving Kibble-Zurek scaling laws and examining the role of critical coarsening near the critical point.

Contribution

It derives and tests Kibble-Zurek scaling laws for slow quenches in classical models and explores the impact of critical coarsening on nonequilibrium dynamics.

Findings

Defect density decays linearly when approaching the critical point quickly.

Scaled mass distribution in zero-range process shows similar linear decay.

Critical coarsening influences the scaling behavior near the critical point.

Abstract

While a large number of studies have focused on the nonequilibrium dynamics of a system when it is quenched instantaneously from a disordered phase to an ordered phase, such dynamics have been relatively less explored when the quench occurs at a finite rate. Here we study the slow quench dynamics in two paradigmatic models of classical statistical mechanics, {viz.}, one-dimensional kinetic Ising model and mean-field zero-range process, when the system is annealed slowly to the critical point. Starting from the time evolution equations for the spin-spin correlation function in the Ising model and the mass distribution in the zero-range process, we derive the Kibble-Zurek scaling laws. We then test a recent proposal that critical coarsening which is ignored in the Kibble-Zurek argument plays a role in the nonequilibrium dynamics close to the critical point. We find that the defect density in the Ising model and a scaled mass distribution in the zero-range process decay linearly to the respective value at the critical point with the time remaining until the end of the quench provided the final quench point is approached sufficiently fast, and sublinearly otherwise. As the linear scaling for the approach to the critical point also holds when a system following an instantaneous quench is allowed to coarsen for a finite time interval, we conclude that critical coarsening captures the scaling behavior in the vicinity of the critical point if the annealing is not too slow.