Large deviations in models of growing clusters with symmetry-breaking transitions

We analyse large deviations of the magnetisation in two models of growing clusters. The models have symmetry-breaking transitions, so the typical magnetisation of a growing cluster may be either positive or negative, with equal probability. For large clusters, the magnetisation obeys a large deviation principle. We show that the corresponding rate function is zero for values of the magnetisation that are intermediate between the two steady state values, which means that fluctuations with these values of the magnetisation are much less unlikely than previously thought. We show that their probabilities decay as power laws in the cluster size, instead of the exponential scaling that would be expected from the large deviation principle. We discuss how this observation is related to dynamical phase coexistence phenomena. We also comment on the typical size of magnetisation fluctuations.
16 pages, authors accepted version