Zurek's scaling-law in the Ising model out of thermal equilibrium

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Main Authors: Pérez-Loera, José Armando, Bietenholz, Wolfgang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Pérez-Loera, José Armando
Bietenholz, Wolfgang
author_facet Pérez-Loera, José Armando
Bietenholz, Wolfgang
contents The Kibble mechanism plays a prominent role in the theory of the early Universe, as an explanation of the possible formation of cosmic strings. Zurek suggested the analogous effect in liquid helium under rapid cooling, and he conjectured - together with del Campo and Kibble - a scaling-law for the relation between the density of remnant topological defects and the cooling rate, when a system passes through its critical temperature. Such scaling-laws were indeed observed in condensed matter experiments. Here we test the validity of Zurek's scaling-law in a different framework. We numerically study the behavior of the Ising model (with classical spins) in 1, 2 and 3 dimensions under rapid cooling. This model does not have topological defects, so we consider the dynamics of domains instead, i.e. we measure their evolution during a cooling process down to zero temperature. For several Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms, we consistently observe scaling-laws along the lines of Zurek's conjecture, in all dimensions under consideration, which shows that this feature holds more generally than expected. It is highly remarkable that even the exponents of these scaling-laws are consistent for three different algorithms, which hints at a physical meaning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_16168
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Zurek's scaling-law in the Ising model out of thermal equilibrium
Pérez-Loera, José Armando
Bietenholz, Wolfgang
Statistical Mechanics
High Energy Physics - Lattice
The Kibble mechanism plays a prominent role in the theory of the early Universe, as an explanation of the possible formation of cosmic strings. Zurek suggested the analogous effect in liquid helium under rapid cooling, and he conjectured - together with del Campo and Kibble - a scaling-law for the relation between the density of remnant topological defects and the cooling rate, when a system passes through its critical temperature. Such scaling-laws were indeed observed in condensed matter experiments. Here we test the validity of Zurek's scaling-law in a different framework. We numerically study the behavior of the Ising model (with classical spins) in 1, 2 and 3 dimensions under rapid cooling. This model does not have topological defects, so we consider the dynamics of domains instead, i.e. we measure their evolution during a cooling process down to zero temperature. For several Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms, we consistently observe scaling-laws along the lines of Zurek's conjecture, in all dimensions under consideration, which shows that this feature holds more generally than expected. It is highly remarkable that even the exponents of these scaling-laws are consistent for three different algorithms, which hints at a physical meaning.
title Zurek's scaling-law in the Ising model out of thermal equilibrium
topic Statistical Mechanics
High Energy Physics - Lattice
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16168