Freezing into stripe states in two-dimensional ferromagnets and crossing probabilities in critical percolation

Abstract

When a two-dimensional Ising ferromagnet is quenched from above the critical temperature to zero temperature, the system eventually converges to either a ground state or an infinitely long-lived metastable stripe state. By applying results from percolation theory, we analytically determine the probability to reach the stripe state as a function of the aspect ratio and the form of the boundary conditions. These predictions agree with simulation results. Our approach generally applies to coarsening dynamics of nonconserved scalar fields in two dimensions.