Eur. Phys. J. B 32, 215-225 (2003)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2003-00091-9

Metastable states of the Ising chain with Kawasaki dynamics

¹ Service de Physique Théorique (URA 2306 of CNRS) , CEA Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France
² Service de Physique de l'État Condensé, CEA Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France

Corresponding author: ^a luck@spht.saclay.cea.fr

Received: 24 October 2002
Revised: 13 January 2003
Published online: 1 April 2003

Abstract

We consider a ferromagnetic Ising chain evolving under Kawasaki dynamics at zero temperature. We investigate the statistics of the blocking time, as well as various characteristics of the metastable configurations reached by the system, including the statistics of the final energy, the spin correlations, and the distribution of domain sizes. Results of extensive numerical simulations are compared with analytical predictions made for the a priori ensemble of all blocked configurations with equal weights. Qualitative differences are found, e.g. in the domain sizes, which are found to be neither statistically independent nor exponentially distributed.