Slow Logarithmic Decay of Magnetization in the Zero Temperature Dynamics of an Ising Spin Chain: Analogy to Granular Compaction

We study the zero temperature coarsening dynamics in an Ising chain in presence of a dynamically induced field that favors locally the -' phase compared to the +’ phase. At late times, while the +' domains still coarsen as $t^{1/2}$, the -’ domains coarsen slightly faster as $t^{1\mathrm{/}2}\log (t)$. As a result, at late times, the magnetization decays slowly as, $m(t)=-1 +{\rm const.}/{\log (t)}$. We establish this behavior both analytically within an independent interval approximation (IIA) and numerically. In the zero volume fraction limit of the +' phase, we argue that the IIA becomes asymptotically exact. Our model can be alternately viewed as a simple Ising model for granular compaction. At late times in our model, the system decays into a fully compact state (where all spins are -') in a slow logarithmic manner $\sim 1/{\log (t)}$, a fact that has been observed in recent experiments on granular systems.