The Physics of Phase Bullying

Note: https://bostonu.zoom.us/j/8405039377
Speaker: Nikolay Shumovskyi, Boston University, Physics Department

When: March 23, 2021 (Tue), 05:00PM to 06:00PM (add to my calendar)

This event is part of the Preliminary Oral Exam.

The Ising model for a ferromagnet and the lattice gas model for a fluid are equivalent in thermodynamics but different in dynamics. The order parameter in the lattice gas is conserved while the order parameter in the Ising ferromagnet is not. As a result, two fluid phases with different densities always coexist in equilibrium, while two magnetic phases with opposite orientations only coexist in a metastable state. The non-conserved nature of the Ising order parameter results in the phenomenon of ``phase amplification,'' when one phase grows at the expense of another one. We show that even a small probability for the order parameter to exhibit Ising dynamics breaks the particle conservation law thus resulting in phase amplification. We characterized this phenomenon by the probability of Ising dynamics, distance to the critical point, and system size.