Non-equilibrium phase transitions. Volume 2: Ageing and dynamical scaling far from equilibrium (Q1022043)

Volume 2 of this monograph is devoted to the dynamical critical behavior of many-body systems far from equilibrium. Characteristically, far-from-equilibrium systems often display dynamic scaling, even if their stationary state is very far from criticality. The main subject of this volume is the dynamical symmetry properties of physical ageing as a formal characterization of such systems. The presented material is divided into two parts, resp., Chapters 1--3 and 4--6. In Chapter 1 the physical ageing is introduced through the analysis of the experimental results on glass-forming systems (ageing in mechanically deformed polymers and ageing in spin glasses) and then on ageing in simple magnets, with the characterization of the main properties of physical ageing: slow relaxational dynamics; breaking of time-translation invariance; dynamical scaling, which underlies ageing phenomena. On these examples the tools of physical ageing investigation are demonstrated, mean-filed theory description and fluctuation-dissipation theorem. Dynamical scaling for late times is related to the existence of a single relevant length-scale \(L(t)\) which grows with time \(t\). Section 2 presents the specification of phase-ordering kinetics in ferromagnets without disorder using the Allen-Cahn equation, Porod's law and Bray-Rutenberg theory for the growth law. In the rest of this chapter the passage to the ageing regime is described on the models \(A\) without any conservation law, non-equilibrium critical dynamics for a quench to the temperature \(T=T_c\) and phase-ordering for a quench to temperatures \(T<T_c\). The methods of the investigation of the passage to the ageing regime developed in Chapter 1 are applied in Chapter 2 to the one-dimensional Glauber-Ising model and kinetic Ising model with spin-flip dynamics (non-Glauberian kinetic Ising model). The relevant systems as exactly solvable have the entire history of equilibrium and non-equlibrium critical phenomena and can be served as precise tests of more general frameworks. Further, the other examples of solvable models undergoing ageing are formulated in terms of the Langevin equation introduced in Chapter 1: the free random walk; the spherical model and its extension where the dynamical exponent no longer is \(z=2\); the kinetic \(XY\) model in spin-wave approximation. In the relevant systems the off-equilibrium dynamics and physical ageing are also studied in detail. In Chapter 3 several situations, where simple ageing behavior occurs, are presented with emphasising the scaling description and the extraction of universal exponents, amplitudes and scaling functions. These are many-body systems with purely relaxational dynamics: model \(A\), models with ordered initial states before the temperature raising (up-quench), models \(B\) with conserved order-parameter, fully frustrated models without disorder, disordered systems I (ferromagnets) and II (critical glassy systems). Surface effects in systems with surfaces are taken into account in Section 3.7. Sections 3.8 and 3.9 consider the ageing processes with absorbing steady states, relevantly contact processes and the non-equilibrium kinetic Ising model, bosonic contact and pair-contact processes and bosonic particle-reaction models with Levy flights. Reversible reaction-diffusion systems (Section 10) form another class of exactly solvable systems, that provides interesting insights into the relaxation mechanism of diffusion-limited reactions out of equilibrium, where the scaling forms for response functions crucially depend on whether a perturbation conserves or breaks the conservation laws. The concluding Section 10 considers models with growth processes. The first part of this volume shows that dynamical scaling plays a central role in the description of scaling phenomena. The general approach, independent of the explicit treatment of a specific model, is presented in the second part, giving particularly the form of the universal scaling functions. This is a group-theoretical approach, motivated by the conformal invariance utility for the analysis of 2D-equilibrium critical phenomena [\textit{A. A. Belavin, A. M. Polyakov} and \textit{A. B. Zamolodchikov}, Nucl. Phys. B 241, No. 2, 333--380 (1984; Zbl 0661.17013)]. In Chapters 4--6 extensions of dynamical scaling for non-equilibrium systems in the context of ageing are studied, i.e. an introduction to the incomplete theory of local scale-invariance (LSI). In Chapter 4 the LSI for non-equilibrium systems with a dynamical exponent \(z=2\) are studied. Here the Schrödinger group is the natural candidate for a group of LSI. It is described in Section 4.2, and the relevant ageing-invariance is presented in Section 4.3. Connections of conformal invariance and ageing are considered in Section 4.4. The requirement of Galilei-invariance leads to the conceptually important Bargmann superselection rules (Section 4.5), which become an essential tool for the discussion of the dynamic symmetries of the stochastic Langevin equations, where at first sight the noise terms seem to exclude any interesting symmetries. A non-trivial reduction formula, based on the Bargmann superselection rules, allows to solve this problem and hence to calculate explicitly the scaling functions of the two-time response and correlation functions (Section 4.6), ready to be tested against concrete models (Section 4.7). Chapter 5 contains an extension of this program to the case of a generic dynamical exponent \(z\neq2\). Since no Lie algebras of local scale-transformations with \(z\neq2\) are available, a necessary first step here is the construction of infinitesimal generators and invariant equations (Section 5.2). A closed procedure is then introduced which leads to a discussion of Galilei-invariance extended to \(z\neq2\) and the generalized Bargmann rules (Section 5.3). Here the authors note an analogy with the structure found for conformally invariant systems perturbed by certain relevant scaling operators on the example of 2D critical Ising model in an external magnetic field [\textit{A. B. Zamolodchikov}, Proc. Symp., Kyoto/Jap. and Kyuzeso/Jap. 1988, Adv. Stud. Pure Math. 19, 641--674 (1989; Zbl 0703.17014)]. On this base explicit results for the two-time responses and correlations are presented in Sections 5.4 and 5.5, which allow to give explicit test of these symmetries in concrete models. In Chapter 6 the analogous program is carried out for Lipshitz points, which provide a well-studied example of strongly anisotropic equilibrium critical points, characterized by the anisotropy exponent \(\Theta\approx\frac12\). In the appendices equilibrium models and some auxiliary notions are carried out.