Low-temperature behavior of the multicomponent Widom-Rowlison model on finite square lattices

Abstract: We consider the multicomponent Widom-Rowlison with Metropolis dynamics, which describes the evolution of a particle system where $M$ different types of particles interact subject to certain hard-core constraints. Focusing on the scenario where the spatial structure is modeled by finite square lattices, we study the asymptotic behavior of this interacting particle system in the low-temperature regime, analyzing the tunneling times between its $M$ maximum-occupancy configurations, and the mixing time of the corresponding Markov chain. In particular, we develop a novel combinatorial method that, exploiting geometrical properties of the Widom-Rowlinson configurations on finite square lattices, leads to the identification of the timescale at which transitions between maximum-occupancy configurations occur and shows how this depends on the chosen boundary conditions and the square lattice dimensions.