Title:
Metastability for the Blume-Capel model with distribution of magnetic anisotropy using different dynamics.

Abstract:
We investigate the relaxation time of magnetization or the lifetime of the metastable state for a spin S=1 square-lattice ferromagnetic Blume-Capel model with distribution of magnetic anisotropy (with small variances), using two different dynamics such as Glauber and phonon-assisted dynamics. At each lattice site, the Blume-Capel model allows three spin projections (+1, 0, -1) and a site-dependent magnetic anisotropy parameter. For each dynamic, we examine the low-temperature lifetime in two dynamic regions with different sizes of the critical droplet and at the boundary between the regions, within the single-droplet regime. We compute the average lifetime of the metastable state for a fixed lattice size, using both kinetic Monte Carlo simulations and the absorbing Markov chains method in the zero-temperature limit. We find that for both dynamics the lifetime obeys a modified Arrhenius-like law, where the energy barrier of the metastable state depends on the temperature and standard deviation of the distribution of magnetic anisotropy for a given field and magnetic anisotropy and that an explicit form of this dependence differs in different dynamic regions for different dynamics. Interestingly, the phonon-assisted dynamic prevents transitions between degenerate states, which results in a large increase in the energy barrier at the region boundary compared to that for the Glauber dynamic. However, the introduction of a small distribution of magnetic anisotropy allows the spin system to relax via lower-energy pathways such that the energy barrier greatly decreases. In addition, for the phonon-assisted dynamic, even the prefactor of the lifetime is substantially reduced for a broad distribution of magnetic anisotropy in both regions considered, in contrast to the Glauber dynamic. Our findings show that overall the phonon-assisted dynamic is more significantly affected by the distribution of magnetic anisotropy than the Glauber dynamic.