A family of nonequilibrium kinetic Ising models, introduced earlier, evolving under the competing effect of spin flips at zero temperature and nearest-neighbour random spin exchanges, is further investigated. By increasing the range of spin exchanges and/or their strength the nature of the phase transition 'Ising-to-active' becomes of (dynamic) mean-field type and a first-order tricritical point is located at the Glauber ( delta =0) limit. Corrections to the mean-field theory are evaluated up to sixth order in a cluster approximation and found to give good results concerning the phase boundary and the critical exponent beta of the order parameter which is obtained as beta approximately=1.0.
Nonequilibrium kinetic Ising models evolving under the competing effect of spin flips at zero temperature and Kawasaki-type spin-exchange kinetics at infinite temperature T are investigated here in one dimension from the point of view of phase transition and critical behaviour. Branching annihilating random walks with an even number of offspring (on the part of the ferromagnetic domain boundaries), is a decisive process in forming the steady state of the system for a range of parameters, in the family of models considered. A wide variety of quantities characterize the critical behaviour of the system. Results of computer simulations and of a generalized mean field theory are presented and discussed.