Metastable behavior of the spin-s Ising and Blume-Capel ferromagnets: A Monte Carlo study

We present an extensive Monte Carlo investigation of the metastable lifetime through the reversal of the magnetization of spin-$s$ Ising and Blume-Capel models, where $s=\{1/2, 1, 3/2, 2, 5/2, 3, 7/2\}$. The mean metastable lifetime (or reversal time) is studied as a function of the applied magnetic field and for both models is found to obey the Becker-Doring theory, as was initially developed for the case of $s=1/2$ Ising ferromagnet within the classical nucleation theory. Moreover, the decay of metastable volume fraction nicely follows the Avrami's law for all values of $s$ and for both models considered.
Comment: 21 preprint-style pages, 7 figures, 3 tables; version to be published in Phys. Rev. E