Dynamics of Phase Transitions by Hysteresis Methods I

TL;DR

This paper explores hysteresis methods to analyze non-equilibrium effects during phase transitions in QCD-like systems, revealing spinodal decomposition phenomena that could influence gluon production in heavy ion experiments.

Contribution

It introduces hysteresis-based techniques to study the dynamics of phase transitions, particularly in models relevant to QCD, and identifies spinodal decomposition as a dominant process.

Findings

Hysteresis calculations reveal spinodal decomposition during phase transitions.

Comparison with equilibrium states shows non-equilibrium dynamics dominate.

Potential implications for gluon production in heavy ion collisions.

Abstract

In studies of the QCD deconfining phase transition or crossover by means of heavy ion experiments, one ought to be concerned about non-equilibrium effects due to heating and cooling of the system. Motivated by this, we look at hysteresis methods to study the dynamics of phase transitions. Our systems are temperature driven through the phase transition using updating procedures in the Glauber universality class. Hysteresis calculations are presented for a number of observables, including the (internal) energy, properties of Fortuin-Kasteleyn clusters and structure functions. We test the methods for 2d Potts models, which provide a rich collection of phase transitions with a number of rigorously known properties. Comparing with equilibrium configurations we find a scenario where the dynamics of the transition leads to a spinodal decomposition which dominates the statistical properties of the configurations. One may expect an enhancement of low energy gluon production due to spinodal decomposition of the Polyakov loops, if such a scenario is realized by nature.