Loss without recovery of Gibbsianness during diffusion of continuous spins

Abstract

We consider a specific continuous-spin Gibbs distribution $\mu_{t=0}$ for a double-well potential that allows for ferromagnetic ordering. We study the time-evolution of this initial measure under independent diffusions. For `high temperature' initial measures we prove that the time-evoved measure $\mu_{t}$ is Gibbsian for all $t$. For `low temperature' initial measures we prove that $\mu_t$ stays Gibbsian for small enough times $t$, but loses its Gibbsian character for large enough $t$. In contrast to the analogous situation for discrete-spin Gibbs measures, there is no recovery of the Gibbs property for large $t$ in the presence of a non-vanishing external magnetic field. All of our results hold for any dimension $d\geq 2$. This example suggests more generally that time-evolved continuous-spin models tend to be non-Gibbsian more easily than their discrete-spin counterparts.