The Damage Spreading (DS) method allows the investigation of the effect caused by tiny perturbations, in the initial conditions of physical systems, on their final stationary or equilibrium states. The damage (D(t)) is determined during the dynamic evolution of a physical system and measures the time dependence of the difference between a reference (unperturbed) configuration and an initially perturbed one. In this paper we first give a brief overview of Monte Carlo simulation results obtained by applying the DS method. Different model systems under study often exhibit a transition between a state where the damage becomes healed (the frozen phase) and a regime where the damage spreads arriving at a finite (stationary) value (the damaged phase), when a control parameter is finely tuned. These kinds of transitions are actually true irreversible phase transitions themselves, and the issue of their universality class is also discussed. Subsequently, the attention is focused on the propagation of damage in magnetic systems placed in confined geometries. The influence of interfaces between magnetic domains of different orientation on the spreading of the perturbation is also discussed, showing that the presence of interfaces enhances the propagation of the damage. Furthermore, the critical transition between propagation and nonpropagation of the damage is discussed. In all cases, the determined critical exponents suggest that the DS transition does not belong to the universality class of Directed Percolation, unlike many other systems exhibiting irreversible phase transitions. This result reflects the dramatic influence of interfaces on the propagation of perturbations in magnetic systems.
The Damage Spreading (DS) method allows the investigation of the effect caused by tiny perturbations, in the initial conditions of physical systems, on their final stationary or equilibrium states. The damage (D(t)) is determined during the dynamic evolution of a physical system and measures the time dependence of the difference between a reference (unperturbed) configuration and an initially perturbed one. In this paper we first give a brief overview of Monte Carlo simulation results obtained by applying the DS method. Different model systems under study often exhibit a transition between a state where the damage becomes healed (the frozen phase) and a regime where the damage spreads arriving at a finite (stationary) value (the damaged phase), when a control parameter is finely tuned. These kinds of transitions are actually true irreversible phase transitions themselves, and the issue of their universality class is also discussed. Subsequently, the attention is focused on the propagation of damage in magnetic systems placed in confined geometries. The influence of interfaces between magnetic domains of different orientation on the spreading of the perturbation is also discussed, showing that the presence of interfaces enhances the propagation of the damage. Furthermore, the critical transition between propagation and nonpropagation of the damage is discussed. In all cases, the determined critical exponents suggest that the DS transition does not belong to the universality class of Directed Percolation, unlike many other systems exhibiting irreversible phase transitions. This result reflects the dramatic influence of interfaces on the propagation of perturbations in magnetic systems.
The short-time critical dynamics of propagation of damage in the Ising ferromagnet in two dimensions is studied by means of Monte Carlo simulations. Starting with equilibrium configurations at $T=\ensuremath{\infty}$ and magnetization M=0, an initial damage is created by flipping a small amount of spins in one of the two replicas studied. In this way, the initial damage is proportional to the initial magnetization M0 in one of the configurations upon quenching the system at TC, the Onsager critical temperature of the ferromagnetic-paramagnetic transition. It is found that, at short times, the damage increases with an exponent ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{D}=1.915(3)$, which is much larger than the exponent $\ensuremath{\theta}=0.197$ characteristic of the initial increase of the magnetization M(t). Also, an epidemic study was performed. It is found that the average distance from the origin of the epidemic (⟨R2(t)⟩) grows with an exponent ${z}^{\ensuremath{\ast}}\ensuremath{\approx}\ensuremath{\eta}\ensuremath{\approx}1.9$, which is the same, within error bars, as the exponent ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{D}$. However, the survival probability of the epidemics reaches a plateau so that $\ensuremath{\delta}=0$. On the other hand, by quenching the system to lower temperatures one observes the critical spreading of the damage at ${T}_{D}\ensuremath{\simeq}0.51{T}_{C}$, where all the measured observables exhibit power laws with exponents ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{D}=1.026(3)$, $\ensuremath{\delta}=0.133(1)$, and ${z}^{\ensuremath{\ast}}=1.74(3)$.
A powerful computational method for dealing with correlation functions in magnetic systems, based on damage-spreading simulations, is reviewed and tested, by investigating the q-state Potts ferromagnet, on a square lattice, at criticality. Exact relations involving special kinds of damage and the spin-spin correlation function, as well as the magnetization, are used. The efficiency of the method arises with a significant reduction of the finite-size effects, with respect to conventional Monte Carlo simulations. Correlation functions, which represent usually a hard task within this latter procedure, appear to be much more easily estimated through the present damage-spreading simulations. The effectiveness of the technique is illustrated by an accurate estimate of the exponent eta, of the spin-spin correlation function, for q=2, 3, and 4, with rather small lattice sizes. In the cases q > or = 5, an analysis of the magnetization is consistent with the well-known first-order phase transition.
The time evolution of two ferromagnetic Ising cubic systems, which differ by the orientation of a single spin at t=0, has been studied in a magnetic field B by computer simulation. The critical field B c (T), above which the previous initial damage does not spread, has been determined. The magnetisation for B=B c is very well approximated by M(B c )=1-exp(-T c /T) in the range of T values investigated. The concentration of minority spins at B c (T) differs strongly from the corresponding concentration for percolation at T.
We study damage spreading in the ferromagnetic Ising model, on the square lattice, by performing numerical simulations in the microcanonical ensemble. Although the damage spreads for all temperature values, a dynamical critical phenomenon is observed at Td=1.020(2)TC (TC is the Curie temperature): For T\ensuremath{\ge}Td the damage D(t) is insensitive to its initial value D(0), while for TTd a weak dependence on D(0) is present in such a way that for each T there are two values of D(t) corresponding to the initial conditions D(0)1/2 and D(0)>1/2. We have also identified a convenient order parameter to characterize the transition occurring at Td. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
In this work we have studied, by Monte Carlo computer simulation, several properties that characterize the damage spreading in the Ising model, defined in Bravais lattices (the square and the triangular lattices) and in the Sierpinski Gasket. First, we investigated the antiferromagnetic model in the triangular lattice with uniform magnetic field, by Glauber dynamics; The chaotic-frozen critical frontier that we obtained coincides , within error bars, with the paramegnetic-ferromagnetic frontier of the static transition. Using heat-bath dynamics, we have studied the ferromagnetic model in the Sierpinski Gasket: We have shown that there are two times that characterize the relaxation of the damage: One of them satisfy the generalized scaling theory proposed by Henley (critical exponent z~A/T for low temperatures). On the other hand, the other time does not obey any of the known scaling theories. Finally, we have used methods of time series analysis to study in Glauber dynamics, the damage in the ferromagnetic Ising model on a square lattice. We have obtained a Hurst exponent with value 0.5 in high temperatures and that grows to 1, close to the temperature TD, that separates the chaotic and the frozen phases