Large deviations and nontrivial exponents in coarsening systems

We investigate the statistics of the mean magnetization, of its large deviations and persistent large deviations in simple coarsening systems. In particular we consider more specifically the case of the diffusion equation, of the Ising chain at zero temperature and of the two-dimensional voter model. For the diffusion equation, at large times, the mean magnetization has a limit law, which is studied analytically using the independent interval approximation. The probability of persistent large deviations, defined as the probability that the mean magnetization was, for all previous times, greater than some level x, decays algebraically at large times, with an exponent theta(x) continuously varying with x. When x = 1, theta(1) is the usual persistence exponent. Similar behaviour is found for the Glauber-Ising chain at zero temperature. For the two-dimensional voter model, large deviations of the mean magnetization are algebraic, while the probability of persistent large deviations seem to behave as the usual persistence probability.