Renormalization-group theory for cooling first-order phase transitions in Potts models.

We develop a dynamic field-theoretic renormalization-group (RG) theory for cooling first-order phase transitions in the Potts model. It is suggested that the well-known imaginary fixed points of the q-state Potts model for q>10/3 in the RG theory are the origin of the dynamic scaling found recently from numerical simulations, apart from logarithmic corrections. This indicates that the real and imaginary fixed points of the Potts model are both physical and control the scalings of the continuous and discontinuous phase transitions, respectively, of the model. Our one-loop results for the scaling exponents are already not far away from the numerical results. Further, the scaling exponents depend on q only slightly, consistent with the numerical results. Therefore, the theory is believed to provide a natural explanation of the dynamic scaling including the scaling exponents and their scaling laws for various observables in the cooling first-order phase transition of the Potts model.