Scaling properties of the relaxation time near the mean-field spinodal

Abstract

We study the relaxation processes of the infinitely long-range interaction model (the Husimi-Temperley model) near the spinodal point. We propose a unified finite-size scaling function near the spinodal point, including the metastable region, the spinodal point, and the unstable region. We explicitly adopt the Glauber dynamics, derive a master equation for the probability distribution of the total magnetization, and perform the so-called van Kampen Omega expansion (an expansion in terms of the inverse of the systems size), which leads to a Fokker-Planck equation. We analyze the scaling properties of the Fokker-Planck equation and confirm the obtained scaling plot by direct numerical solution of the original master equation, and by kinetic Monte Carlo simulation of the stochastic decay process.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure