Ehrenfest urn model with interaction

Abstract

We studied the Ehrenfest urn model in which particles in the same urn interact with each other. Depending on the nature of interaction, the system undergoes a first-order or second-order phase transition. The relaxation time to the equilibrium state, the Poincare cycles of the equilibrium state and the most far-from-equilibrium state, and the duration time of the states during first-order phase transition are calculated. It was shown that the scaling behavior of the Poincare cycles could be served as an indication to the nature of phase transition, and the ratio of duration time of the states could be a strong evidence of the metastability during first-order phase transition.