Short-time critical dynamics of damage spreading in the two-dimensional Ising model

Abstract

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 ${M}_{0}$ in one of the configurations upon quenching the system at ${T}_{C}$, 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 $(⟨{R}^{2}(t)⟩)$ 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 ${z}^{\ensuremath{\ast}}=1.74(3)$.