2004/01/31 by Pablo I. Hurtado, P. I. Hurtado, Joaquín Marro +3
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · Psychology · #Characterization and Applications of Magnetic Nanoparticles #Condensed matter physics #Ferromagnetism #Magnetic properties of thin films #Materials science #Non-equilibrium thermodynamics #Phase (matter) #Physics #Psychology #Quantum mechanics #Reentrancy #Spinodal #Theoretical and Computational Physics #Thermodynamics #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.70.021101
published as Phys. Rev. E 70, 021101 (2004) · 7 pages, 4 figures; Final version to appear in Phys. Rev. E; Section V has been revised
arxiv created 2004/05/21 · openalex publication_date 2004/08/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The metastable behavior of a kinetic Ising-type ferromagnetic model system in which a generic type of microscopic disorder induces nonequilibrium steady states is studied by computer simulation and a mean-field approach. We pay attention, in particular, to the spinodal curve or intrinsic coercive field that separates the metastable region from the unstable one. We find that, under strong nonequilibrium conditions, this exhibits reentrant behavior as a function of temperature. That is, metastability does not happen in this regime for both low and high temperatures, but instead emerges for intermediate temperature, as a consequence of the nonlinear interplay between thermal and nonequilibrium fluctuations. We argue that this behavior, which is in contrast with equilibrium phenomenology and could occur in actual impure specimens, might be related to the presence of an effective multiplicative noise in the system.