FINITE-SIZE SCALING ANALYSIS OF THE DECAY OF AN UNSTABLE STATE DURING A FIRST ORDER PHASE TRANSITION

Abstract

We extend standard finite-size scaling methods to study the dynamical evolution of an unstable state far from equilibrium as the system undergoes a first order phase transition. We suggest that the nonequilibrium structure factor S(q, t, L), at late times and for large enough lattice sizes, scales as S(q, t, L)=LdF(qL, t1/x/L). L is the linear dimension of the system and 1/x is the domain growth exponent. We obtain x=2 in the case of the kinetic Ising model with a nonconserved order parameter. For a critical quench in a system with conserved order parameter, scaling of the peak of the structure factor gives 1/x≈0.27. Higher wavenumbers, however, are more consistent with x=3.