Sonification of Spin Models. Listening to Phase Transitions in the Ising and Potts Model.

Abstract

In the interdisciplinary research project SonEnvir, we used sound to perceptualise data stemming from spin models. The advantages herein lie in the possibility of displaying more dimensions than in visual representation on one hand, and in the potential of the human auditory system on the other. Spin models provide an interesting test case for sonification in physics, as they model complex systems that are dynamically evolving and not satisfactorily visualisable. While the theoretical background is largely understood, their phase transitions have been an interesting subject for studies for decades, and results in this field can be applied to many scientific domains. Also, most classical methods of solving spin models rely on mean values, whereas especially at the critical point of phase transition the fluctuations of single spins are their most important feature. We found that sound is an ideal display mode to study these fluctuations and the dynamic evolution of the whole model. Our sonifications allow for identifying the different phases easily, independent of the dimension of the model and the number of spin states. Also one gets a first idea about the order of the phase transition.