Speaker
Description
We investigate the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of a $Z_2$-symmetric scalar field theory with Langevin dynamics under linear driving protocols across magnetic first-order phase transitions, close to and far below the critical temperature $T_c$.
Using classical-statistical lattice simulations, we find that if the driving timescale is sufficiently fast, the system exhibits finite-time scaling behavior independent of temperature and dimensionality, identical to that observed in mean-field simulations. In slow quenches near $T_c$ this mean-field scaling crosses over to critical Kibble-Zurek scaling behavior for which we compute universal scaling functions.
These smoothly extend the well-known Widom-Griffiths form by an additional finite-time scaling variable to describe the universal out-of-equilibrium modifications.
For temperatures $T \ll T_c$ nucleation and growth dominate the transition dynamics, resulting in corrections to scaling. Near the transition point where the order parameter changes sign, the crossover between mean-field and critical out-of-equilibrium dynamics is found to be well described by the leading algebraic correction to Kibble-Zurek scaling.
L. J. Sieke, J. Fuchs, L. von Smekal. (2026). Non-equilibrium scaling across first-order transitions with relativistic scalar fields. arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.10346.