English

Zero-temperature 2D Ising model and anisotropic curve-shortening flow

Probability 2016-01-13 v2 Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

Let \DD\DD be a simply connected, smooth enough domain of \bbR2\bbR^2. For L>0L>0 consider the continuous time, zero-temperature heat bath dynamics for the nearest-neighbor Ising model on Z2\mathbb Z^2 with initial condition such that σx=1\sigma_x=-1 if xL\DDx\in L\DD and σx=+1\sigma_x=+1 otherwise. It is conjectured \cite{cf:Spohn} that, in the diffusive limit where space is rescaled by LL, time by L2L^2 and LL\to\infty, the boundary of the droplet of "-" spins follows a \emph{deterministic} anisotropic curve-shortening flow, where the normal velocity at a point of its boundary is given by the local curvature times an explicit function of the local slope. The behavior should be similar at finite temperature T<TcT<T_c, with a different temperature-dependent anisotropy function. We prove this conjecture (at zero temperature) when \DD\DD is convex. Existence and regularity of the solution of the deterministic curve-shortening flow is not obvious \textit{a priori} and is part of our result. To our knowledge, this is the first proof of mean curvature-type droplet shrinking for a model with genuine microscopic dynamics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1112.3160,
  title  = {Zero-temperature 2D Ising model and anisotropic curve-shortening flow},
  author = {H. Lacoin and F. Simenhaus and F. L. Toninelli},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1112.3160},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

53 pages, 13 figures, version accepted for publication in Journal of the European Mathematical Society

R2 v1 2026-06-21T19:51:04.460Z