English

Large nucleation distances from impurities in the cosmological quark-hadron transition

Astrophysics 2009-10-28 v1 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We calculate the mean nucleation distance, dnucd_{nuc}, in a first order cosmological quark-hadron phase transition. For homogeneous nucleation we find that self-consistent inclusion of curvature energy reduces dnucd_{nuc} to 2\lesssim 2cm. However, impurities can lead to heterogeneous nucleation with dnucd_{nuc} of several meters, a value high enough to change the outcome of Big Bang nucleosynthesis.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9602071,
  title  = {Large nucleation distances from impurities in the cosmological quark-hadron transition},
  author = {Michael B. Christiansen and Jes Madsen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9602071},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

18 pages, 5 ps figures. To appear in Physical Review D, 15 May 1996