Growth and Scaling in Anisotropic Spinodal Decomposition

TL;DR

This paper investigates anisotropic spinodal decomposition under large drive, revealing unique growth mechanisms, self-similarity, and a characteristic length scale in two dimensions, contributing to understanding nonequilibrium phase separation.

Contribution

It identifies the effects of anisotropy on phase separation dynamics, including a novel growth law and scaling behaviors specific to driven systems.

Findings

Time self-similarity observed in structure factor

Finite-size scaling demonstrated

A macroscopic length scale grows as t^{1/3} in 2D

Abstract

We studied phase separation in a particle interacting system under a large drive along x. We here identify the basic growth mechanisms, and demonstrate time self-similarity, finite-size scaling, as well as other interesting features of both the structure factor and the scaling function. We also show that, at late t in two dimensions, there is a unique t-dependent length increasing l_y(t) \sim t^{1/3} for macroscopic systems. Our results, which follow as a direct consequence of the underlying anisotropy, may characterize a class of nonequilibrium situations.