Metastable and scaling regimes of one-dimensional Kawasaki dynamics

Abstract

We investigate the large-time scaling regimes arising from a variety of metastable structures in a chain of Ising spins with both first- and second-neighbor couplings while subject to Kawasaki dynamics. Depending on the ratio and sign of these former, different dynamic exponents are suggested by finite-size scaling analyses of relaxation times. At low but nonzero temperatures these are calculated via exact diagonalizations of the evolution operator in finite chains under several activation barriers. In the absence of metastability the dynamics is always diffusive.