Phase ordering with a global conservation law: Ostwald ripening and coalescence

Massimo Conti*, Baruch Meerson, Avner Peleg, Pavel V. Sasorov

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

44 Scopus citations

Abstract

Globally conserved phase ordering dynamics is investigated in systems with short range correlations at t = 0. A Ginzburg-Landau equation with a global conservation law is employed as the phase field model. The conditions are found under which the sharp-interface limit of this equation is reducible to the area-preserving motion by curvature. Numerical simulations show that, for both critical and off-critical quench, the equal-time pair correlation function exhibits dynamic scaling, and the characteristic coarsening length obeys l(t)∼t1/2. For the critical quench, our results are in excellent agreement with earlier results. For off-critical quench (Ostwald ripening) we investigate the dynamics of the size distribution function of the minority phase domains. The simulations show that, at large times, this distribution function has a self-similar form with growth exponent 1/2. The scaled distribution, however, strongly differs from the classical Wagner distribution. We attribute this difference to coalescence of domains. A theory of Ostwald ripening is developed that takes into account binary coalescence events. The theoretical scaled distribution function agrees well with that obtained in the simulations.

Original languageAmerican English
Article number046117
Pages (from-to)046117/1-046117/13
JournalPhysical Review E
Volume65
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2002

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