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Published on: November 24, 2015
Large deviations in models of growing clusters with symmetry-breaking transitions
1Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge CB3 0WA, United Kingdom and Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1EW, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
We analyze large deviations of the magnetization in two models of growing clusters. The models have symmetry-breaking transitions, so the typical magnetization of a growing cluster may be either positive or negative, with equal probability. For large clusters, the magnetization obeys a large-deviation principle. We show that the corresponding rate function is zero for values of the magnetization that are intermediate between the two steady state values, which means that fluctuations with these values of the magnetization are much less unlikely than previously thought. We show that their probabilities decay as power laws in the cluster size, instead of the exponential scaling that would be expected from the large-deviation principle. We discuss how this observation is related to dynamical phase coexistence phenomena. We also comment on the typical size of magnetization fluctuations.
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