JOINT ICTP/SISSA STATISTICAL PHYSICS SEMINAR: "Effective surface tension and coarsening in models driven by interfacial noise"

[Statistical Physics Group]

JOINT ICTP/SISSA STATISTICAL PHYSICS SEMINAR

Tuesday, 27 January 2009   -    12:30 hrs



Seminar Room

ICTP Leonardo Building - 1st floor

Luca DALL'ASTA

( ICTP, Trieste, Italy )



" Effective surface tension and coarsening in models driven by  
interfacial noise "

  															Abstract



I review domain coarsening phenomena in the non-equilibrium dynamics  
of discrete spin models with Z_2 symmetry. Standard classifications  
distinguish between "curvature-driven" processes, in which the  
interface motion is driven by surface tension (e.g. Glauber  
dynamics), and purely diffusive processes driven by multiplicative  
noise at the interfaces (e.g. Voter model). There are evidences that  
slight changes of the microscopic Voter-like rule (e.g. adding  
intermediate states) leads to the emergence of an effective surface  
tension. We explain this phenomenon deriving a macroscopic Langevin  
equation for these processes and studying it with field-theoretic and  
numerical methods.


___________________________________
Rosa del Rio (Ms.)
Secretary
Statistical Physics Group
The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics
Strada Costiera 11- 34014 Trieste (Italy)
Leonardo da Vinci Blg room 231
phone: +39-040-2240396
fax: +39-040-22407396