Fast growth at low temperature in vacancy-mediated phase-separation

Abstract

We study the phase-separation dynamics of a two-dimensional Ising model where A and B particles can only exchange position with a vacancy. In a wide range of temperatures the kinetics is dominated, during a long preasymptotic regime, by diffusion processes of particles along domain interfaces. The dynamical exponent z associated to this mechanism differs from the one usually expected for Kawasaki dynamics and is shown to assume different values depending on temperature and relative AB concentration. At low temperatures, in particular, domains grow as t^{1/2}, for equal AB volume fractions.