English

How many phases nucleate in the bidimensional Potts model?

Statistical Mechanics 2022-08-10 v1

Abstract

We study the kinetics of the two-dimensional q > 4-state Potts model after a shallow quench slightly below the critical temperature and above the pseudo spinodal. We use numerical methods and we focus on intermediate values of q, 4 < q < 100. We show that, initially, the system evolves as if it were quenched to the critical temperature. The further decay from the metastable state occurs by nucleation of k out of the q possible phases. For a given quench temperature, k is a logarithmically increasing function of the system size. This unusual finite size dependence is a consequence of a scaling symmetry underlying the nucleation phenomenon for these parameters.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2102.01003,
  title  = {How many phases nucleate in the bidimensional Potts model?},
  author = {Federico Corberi and Leticia F. Cugliandolo and Marco Esposito and Onofrio Mazzarisi and Marco Picco},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2102.01003},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

17 pages, 8 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T22:44:00.089Z