Off-equilibrium scaling driven by a time-dependent magnetic field in O(N) vector models

Abstract

We investigate the off-equilibrium dynamics of a spin system with O($N$) symmetry in $2 < d < 4$ spatial dimensions arising by the presence of a slowly varying time-dependent magnetic field $h(t,t_s) \sim t/t_s$, $t_s$ is a time scale, at the critical temperature $T = T_c$ and below it $T < T_c$. After showing the general theory, we demonstrate the off-equilibrium scaling and we formally compute the correlation functions in the limit of large $N$. We derive the off-equilibrium scaling relations for the hysteresis loop area and for the magnetic work done by the system when the magnetic field $h(t,t_s)$ is varied across the phase transitions cyclically in time. We also investigate the first deviations from the equilibrium behavior in the correlation functions checking the consistence for an exponential approach.