https://doi.org/10.1007/s100510070184
Slow coarsening in a class of driven systems
1
Department of Physics of Complex
Systems, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel
2
Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Edinburgh, Mayfield Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JZ, UK
Received:
3
April
2000
Published online: 15 August 2000
The coarsening process in a class of driven systems is studied. These systems have previously been shown to exhibit phase separation and slow coarsening in one dimension. We consider generalizations of this class of models to higher dimensions. In particular we study a system of three types of particles that diffuse under local conserving dynamics in two dimensions. Arguments and numerical studies are presented indicating that the coarsening process in any number of dimensions is logarithmically slow in time. A key feature of this behavior is that the interfaces separating the various growing domains are macroscopically smooth (well approximated by a Fermi function). This implies that the coarsening mechanism in one dimension is readily extendible to higher dimensions.
PACS: 05.40.-a – Fluctuation phenomena, random processes, noise, and Brownian motion / 05.70.Ln – Nonequilibrium and irreversible thermodynamics / 05.70.Np – Interface and surface thermodynamics
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 2000
