Dynamics across phase transitions
Leticia F. Cugliandolo and Marco Picco
When a macroscopic system is taken across a phase transition by tuning a control parameter, the evolution in the target phase is typically very slow and dictated by coarsening and annihilation of topological defects (for continuous phase transitions) or nucleation and further coarsening (for first order phase transitions). Although many aspects of these processes are very-well known, surprisingly enough, other new and interesting features remain to be uncovered. In the recent past we have identified the importance of the passage through a critical percolation configuration in the early stages of coarsening in different kinds of Ising models with second order phase transitions. We also revisited the thermal first order phase transition realised by the Potts models, in particular with large number of colours, where analytic calculations can be performed and confronted to Monte Carlo simulations.
