Temperature of nonequilibrium lattice systems

We investigate the thermal quench of Ising and Potts models via Monte Carlo dynamics. We nd that the local distribution of the site-site interaction energy has the same form as in the equilibrium case, a result that allows us to dene an instantaneous temperature during the systems relaxation. We also nd that, after an undercritical quench, equals the heat bath temperature in a nite time, while the total system energy is still decreasing due to the coarsening process.