2000/04/30 by J. Ignatius, Dominik J. Schwarz · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Baryon #Baryon number #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Condensed matter physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Homogeneous #Nucleation #Nucleosynthesis #Particle physics #Phase (matter) #Phase transition #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum chromodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Supernova #Thermodynamics #Universe #astro-ph #cond-mat.stat-mech #hep-ph #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.86.2216
published as Phys.Rev.Lett. 86 (2001) 2216-2219 · Version to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett., 4 pages, 1 figure. Difference to heterogeneous nucleation emphasized, amplitude of temperature fluctuations analyzed in more detail, new length scale l_heat introduced, more complicated geometry of baryon number discussed shortly (relevant for low values of l_heat)
arxiv created 2001/01/19 · openalex publication_date 2001/03/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We investigate a new mechanism for the cosmological QCD phase transition: inhomogeneous nucleation. The primordial temperature fluctuations, measured to be deltaT/T approximately 10(-5), are larger than the tiny temperature interval in which bubbles would form in the standard picture of homogeneous nucleation. Thus the bubbles nucleate at cold spots. We find the typical distance between bubble centers to be a few meters. This exceeds the estimates from homogeneous nucleation by 2 orders of magnitude. The resulting baryon inhomogeneities may affect primordial nucleosynthesis.