The relaxation to equilibrium in one-dimensional Potts models

Abstract

A brief overview is given of the studies of relaxation to equilibrium in one-dimensional kineltc potts models with only nearest neighbour couplings at low temperatures both for spin-conserving and nonconserving dynamics. For ferromagnetic couplings, the model shows coarsening with typical size of domains increasing as a power of time. For antiferromagnetic couplings, the state of the system in the limit of large times need not be frozen as the system keeps jumping between the large number of degenerate ground scates. A large variety of relaxational behaviour is seen. Some new results for the q = 3 antiferromagnetic Potts model. under Glauber and Kawasaki dynamics are briefly summarized .