Dynamical cluster size heterogeneity.

Abstract

Only recently has the essential role of the percolation critical point been considered on the dynamical properties of connected regions of aligned spins (domains) after a sudden temperature quench. In equilibrium, it is possible to resolve the contribution to criticality by the thermal and percolative effects (on finite lattices, while in the thermodynamic limit they merge at a single critical temperature) by studying the cluster size heterogeneity, H_{eq}(T), a measure of how different the domains are in size. We extend this equilibrium measure here and study its temporal evolution, H(t), after driving the system out of equilibrium by a sudden quench in temperature. We show that this single parameter is able to detect and well-separate the different time regimes, related to the two timescales in the problem, namely the short percolative and the long coarsening one.