1998/02/03 by Marcelo Gleiser, Gleiser, Marcelo
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #Condensed Matter (cond-mat) #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Solidification and crystal growth phenomena #astro-ph #cond-mat #hep-ph #nanoparticles nucleation surface interactions
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.hep-ph/9802229
22 pages, LaTeX, 6 postscript figures. Invited lectures for ``Field Theoretical Tools in Polymer and Particle Physics'', Wuppertal, June 17-19 1997
arxiv created 1998/02/03 · openalex publication_date 1998/02/03 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The dynamics of phase transitions plays a crucial rôle in the so-called interface between high energy particle physics and cosmology. Many of the interesting results generated during the last fifteen years or so rely on simplified assumptions concerning the complex mechanisms typical of nonequilibrium field theories. After reviewing well-known results concerning the dynamics of first and second order phase transitions, I argue that much is yet to be understood, in particular in situations where homogeneous nucleation theory does not apply. I present a method to deal with departures from homogeneous nucleation, and compare its efficacy with numerical simulations. Finally, I discuss the interesting problem of matching numerical simulations of stochastic field theories with continuum models.