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

Abstract

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, a one-dimensional kinetic Ising model and a 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 their respective values 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.