Size effect in phase transition kinetics

The growth of a spontaneous lattice average magnetization in a magnetic system which is suddenly brought below the transition temperature is a stochastic process in which the very small fluctuations of the initial magnetization are amplified to a macroscopic size. The initial magnetization fluctuates in time around the zero average value because of the finite size of the system. As a consequence of the fluctuation-amplification phenomenon the nonlinear relaxation of the finite system is qualitatively different from that of the infinite one. The present paper studies this feature of phase-transition kinetics in the framework of a very simple model: the dynamical generalization of the spheric…