Ostwald ripening in two dimensions: Treatment with pairwise interactions

Ostwald ripening is the last stage of the evolution of a system with two co existing phases. It is a relatively simple nonequilibrium phenomenon with s everal interesting features. For example, as the system coarsens it goes th rough a scaling state, one which looks the same (up to an overall length sc ale, which grows) at all times. The dynamics of the problem can be mapped, in two dimensions, onto an evolving Coulomb system. In this work we present a brief summary of a novel theoretical approach to this problem, based on an analytic derivation (using a mean-field approach) of an effective two-bo dy interaction between droplets of the minority phase. Thr resulting intera cting many-body dynamics is solved by a very efficient numerical algorithm, allowing us to follow the evolution of more than 10(6) droplets on a simpl e workstation. The results are in excellent agreement with recent experimen ts.