A ug 2 00 1 Master equation approach to configurational kinetics of non-equilibrium alloys and its application to studies of L 1 0-type orderings

We review a series of works where the fundamental master equation is used to develop a microscopical description of evolution of non-equilibrium atomic distributions in alloys. We describe exact equations for temporal evolution of local concentrations and their correlators as well as approximate methods to treat these equations, such as the kinetic mean-field and the kinetic cluster methods. We also describe an application of these methods to studies of kinetics of L10-type orderings in FCC alloys which reveal a number of peculiar microstructural effects, many of them agreeing well with experimental observations.