Stationary currents in long-range interacting magnetic systems

Abstract

We construct a solution for the 1d integro-differential stationary equation derived from a finite-volume version of the mesoscopic model proposed in Giacomin and Lebowitz (J. Stat. Phys. 87(1), 37–61, 1997). This is the continuous limit of an Ising spin chain interacting at long range through Kac potentials, staying in contact at the two edges with reservoirs of fixed magnetizations. The stationary equation of the model is introduced here starting from the Lebowitz-Penrose free energy functional defined on the interval [−ε− 1, ε− 1], ε > 0. Below the critical temperature, and for ε small enough, we obtain a solution that is no longer monotone when opposite in sign, metastable boundary conditions are imposed. Moreover, the mesoscopic current flows along the magnetization gradient. This can be considered as an analytic proof of the existence of diffusion along the concentration gradient in one-component systems undergoing a phase transition, a phenomenon generally known as uphill diffusion. In our proof uniqueness is lacking, and we have clues that the stationary solution obtained is not unique, as suggested by numerical simulations.