Related papers: Supercooling and phase coexistence in cosmological…
Hysteresis in cycling through first-order phase transitions in vortex matter, akin to the well-studied phenomenon of supercooling of water, has been discussed in literature. Hysteresis can be seen while varying either temperature T or…
We study the thermodynamics of helium at densities relevant for white dwarf physics. We find evidence that, as the temperature is increased, there is first a first order transition between two superconducting phases followed by a second…
The dynamics of first order phase transitions are studied in the context of (3+1)-dimensional scalar field theories. Particular attention is paid to the question of quantifying the strength of the transition, and how `weak' and `strong'…
One-dimensional model of a system where first-order phase transition occurs is examined in the present paper. It is shown that basic properties of the phenomenon, such as a well defined temperature of transition, are caused both by…
We study various dynamical aspects of systems possessing a first order phase transition in their phase diagram. We isolate three qualitatively distinct types of theories depending on the structure of instabilities and the nature of the low…
Physical processes related to cosmological first-order phase transitions are discussed and reviewed in this introductory part of dissertation. I first describe cosmological phase transitions on a general level, concentrating on bubble…
The dynamics of phase transitions plays a crucial r\^ole 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…
We calculate the relaxation rate of a scalar field in a plasma of other scalars and fermions with gauge interactions using thermal quantum field theory. It yields the rate of cosmic reheating and thereby determines the temperature of the…
It was shown that in the canonical ensemble the simple exactly soluble statistical model of nuclei decay into nucleons, which is a limiting case of the statistical multifragmentation model, predicts the nuclear first order phase transition…
In this lecture at a school for condensed matter physicists, I begin with basic concepts and tools for investigating phase transitions in quantum field theory. The very different roles of global and gauge symmetries in phase transitions…
The dynamics of weak vs. strong first order phase transitions is investigated numerically for 2+1 dimensional scalar field models. It is argued that the change from a weak to a strong transition is itself a (second order) phase transition,…
We construct general models for holographic superconductivity parametrized by three couplings which are functions of a real scalar field and show that under general assumptions they describe superconducting phase transitions. While some…
We investigate the physical properties of steady flows in a holographic first-order phase transition model, extending from the thermodynamics at equilibrium to the real-time dynamics far from equilibrium. Through spinodal decomposition or…
The evolution of the Universe is the ultimate laboratory to study fundamental physics across energy scales that span about 25 orders of magnitude: from the grand unification scale through particle and nuclear physics scales down to the…
First-order phase transition in a highly correlated electron system can manifest as a dynamic phenomenon. The presence of multiple domains of the coexisting phases average out the dynamical effects making it nearly impossible to predict the…
We consider a generic first-order phase transition at finite temperature and investigate to what extent a population of primordial black holes, of variable masses, can affect the rate of bubble nucleation. Using a thin-wall approximation,…
We consider simple mean field continuum models for first order liquid-liquid demixing and solid-liquid phase transitions and show how the Maxwell construction at phase coexistence emerges on going from finite-size closed systems to the…
We map the mean-field Ising model equation of state onto the QCD phase diagram, and reconstruct the full coexistence region in the case of a first order phase transition. Beyond the coexistence line, we maintain access to the spinodal…
The cosmological QCD phase transition is studied in terms of the color confinement at finite temperature using the dual Higgs theory of QCD. The confinement force is largely reduced at high temperature, which leads to the swelling of…
Cosmological reheating describes the transition of the post-inflationary universe to a hot and thermal state. In order to shed light on the underlying dynamics of this process, we propose to quantum-simulate the reheating-like dynamics of a…