No Arabic abstract
The collective behaviour of statistical systems close to critical points is characterized by an extremely slow dynamics which, in the thermodynamic limit, eventually prevents them from relaxing to an equilibrium state after a change in the thermodynamic control parameters. The non-equilibrium evolution following this change displays some of the features typically observed in glassy materials, such as ageing, and it can be monitored via dynamic susceptibilities and correlation functions of the order parameter, the scaling behaviour of which is characterized by universal exponents, scaling functions, and amplitude ratios. This universality allows one to calculate these quantities in suitable simplified models and field-theoretical methods are a natural and viable approach for this analysis. In addition, if a statistical system is spatially confined, universal Casimir-like forces acting on the confining surfaces emerge and they build up in time when the temperature of the system is tuned to its critical value. We review here some of the theoretical results that have been obtained in recent years for universal quantities, such as the fluctuation-dissipation ratio, associated with the non-equilibrium critical dynamics, with particular focus on the Ising model with Glauber dynamics in the bulk. The non-equilibrium dynamics of the Casimir force acting in a film is discussed within the Gaussian model.
We propose entanglement negativity as a fine-grained probe of measurement-induced criticality. We motivate this proposal in stabilizer states, where for two disjoint subregions, comparing their mutual negativity and their mutual information leads to a precise distinction between bipartite and multipartite entanglement. In a measurement-only stabilizer circuit that maps exactly to two-dimensional critical percolation, we show that the mutual information and the mutual negativity are governed by boundary conformal fields of different scaling dimensions at long distances. We then consider a class of hybrid circuit models obtained by perturbing the measurement-only circuit with unitary gates of progressive levels of complexity. While other critical exponents vary appreciably for different choices of unitary gate ensembles at their respective critical points, the mutual negativity has scaling dimension 3 across remarkably many of the hybrid circuits, which is notably different from that in percolation. We contrast our results with limiting cases where a geometrical minimal-cut picture is available.
This article gives a short description of pattern formation and coarsening phenomena and focuses on recent experimental and theoretical advances in these fields. It serves as an introduction to phase ordering kinetics and it will appear in the special issue `Coarsening dynamics, Comptes Rendus de Physique, edited by F. Corberi and P. Politi.
We investigate the persistence properties of critical d-dimensional systems relaxing from an initial state with non-vanishing order parameter (e.g., the magnetization in the Ising model), focusing on the dynamics of the global order parameter of a d-dimensional manifold. The persistence probability P(t) shows three distinct long-time decays depending on the value of the parameter zeta = (D-2+eta)/z which also controls the relaxation of the persistence probability in the case of a disordered initial state (vanishing order parameter) as a function of the codimension D = d-d and of the critical exponents z and eta. We find that the asymptotic behavior of P(t) is exponential for zeta > 1, stretched exponential for 0 <= zeta <= 1, and algebraic for zeta < 0. Whereas the exponential and stretched exponential relaxations are not affected by the initial value of the order parameter, we predict and observe a crossover between two different power-law decays when the algebraic relaxation occurs, as in the case d=d of the global order parameter. We confirm via Monte Carlo simulations our analytical predictions by studying the magnetization of a line and of a plane of the two- and three-dimensional Ising model, respectively, with Glauber dynamics. The measured exponents of the ultimate algebraic decays are in a rather good agreement with our analytical predictions for the Ising universality class. In spite of this agreement, the expected scaling behavior of the persistence probability as a function of time and of the initial value of the order parameter remains problematic. In this context, the non-equilibrium dynamics of the O(n) model in the limit n->infty and its subtle connection with the spherical model is also discussed in detail.
We consider an out-of-equilibrium lattice model consisting of 2D discrete rotators, in contact with heat reservoirs at different temperatures. The equilibrium counterpart of such model, the clock-model, exhibits three phases; a low-temperature ordered phase, a quasi-liquid phase, and a high-temperature disordered phase, with two corresponding phase transitions. In the out-of-equilibrium model the simultaneous breaking of spatial symmetry and thermal equilibrium give rise to directed rotation of the spin variables. In this regime the system behaves as a thermal machine converting heat currents into motion. In order to quantify the susceptibility of the machine to the thermodynamic force driving it out-of-equilibrium, we introduce and study a dynamical response function. We show that the optimal operational regime for such a thermal machine occurs when the out-of-equilibrium disturbance is applied around the critical temperature at the boundary between the first two phases, namely where the system is mostly susceptible to external thermodynamic forces and exhibits a sharper transition. We thus argue that critical fluctuations in a system of interacting motors can be exploited to enhance the machine overall dynamic and thermodynamic performances.
We consider a dynamic protocol for quantum many-body systems, which enables to study the interplay between unitary Hamiltonian driving and random local projective measurements. While the unitary dynamics tends to increase entanglement, local measurements tend to disentangle, thus favoring decoherence. Close to a quantum transition where the system develops critical correlations with diverging length scales, the competition of the two drivings is analyzed within a dynamic scaling framework, allowing us to identify a regime (dynamic scaling limit) where the two mechanisms develop a nontrivial interplay. We perform a numerical analysis of this protocol in a measurement-driven Ising chain, which supports the scaling laws we put forward. The local measurement process generally tends to suppress quantum correlations, even in the dynamic scaling limit. The power law of the decay of the quantum correlations turns out to be enhanced at the quantum transition.