Growth and scaling in anisotropic spinodal decomposition

¹ Instituto Carlos I de Física Teórica y Computacional and Departamento de Electromagnetismo y Física de la Materia Universidad de Granada - 18071 Granada, Spain
² Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas, UNLP CONICET, Sucursal 4 - Casilla de Correo 16, (1900) La Plata, Argentina

Received: 28 January 2002
Accepted: 12 April 2002

Abstract

We studied phase separation in a particle interacting system under a large drive along x. We here identify the basic growth mechanisms, and demonstrate time self-similarity, finite-size scaling, as well as other interesting features of both the structure factor and the scaling function. We also show that, at late t in two dimensions, there is a unique t-dependent length increasing for macroscopic systems. Our results, which follow as a direct consequence of the underlying anisotropy, may characterize a class of nonequilibrium situations.