A study of metastability in the Ising model

AbstractWe consider a two-dimensional Ising ferromagnet with (+) boundary conditions and negative external field, where a Markovian time evolution is assumed.We construct, suitably restricting the allowed configurations att=0, a non equilibrium state with positive magnetization such that:1)only one phase is present,2)the relaxation time for unit volume is finite and can be made very large. These results are obtained following a general method for describing metastable states proposed by Lebowitz and Penrose and exploiting the analysis of the Ising-spin-configurations in terms of contours given by Minlos and Sinai.