Criticality in the duration of the quasistationary state of the d-dimensional α-Heisenberg ferromagnet.

The duration of the quasistationary states (QSSs) emerging in the d-dimensional classical inertial α-Heisenberg model, i.e., N three-dimensional rotators whose interactions decay with distance r_{ij} as 1/r_{ij}^{α} (α≥0), is studied through first-principle molecular dynamics. These QSSs appear for the very-long-range interaction regime (0≤α/d≤1), for an average energy per rotator UU_{c}. They are characterized by a kinetic temperature T_{QSS}, before a crossover to a second plateau occurring at the Boltzmann-Gibbs temperature T_{BG}>T_{QSS}. We investigate here the behavior of their duration t_{QSS} when U approaches U_{c} from below, for large values of N. The QSS gradually disappears as U→U_{c}, while its duration undergoes a critical phenomenon, namely t_{QSS}∝(U_{c}-U)^{-ξ}. Universality is found for the critical exponent ξ=1.67±0.02 throughout the very-long-range interaction regime.