Related papers: Defect Formation in First Order Phase Transitions …
There has been a recent revival in understanding the spontaneous scalarization phenomenon in scalar-tensor gravity as a phase transition. Using the tools of the Landau theory, we now know that first-order transitions where scalarization…
In the traditional view a cosmic first-order phase transition cannot occur without nucleating handful of bubbles in the entire Hubble volume. The presence of domain walls during the transition may, however, significantly alter the dynamics…
We discuss the effects of fluctuations of the local density of charged dopants near a first order phase transition in electronic systems, that is driven by change of charge carrier density controlled by doping level. Using a generalization…
Flavor transitions of Neutrinos with a nonstandard interaction are studied. A scalar field is conformally coupled to matter and neutrinos. This interaction alters the neutrino effective mass and its wavefunction leading to a damping factor,…
We compute the dynamical prefactor in the nucleation rate of bubbles or droplets in first order phase transitions for the case where both viscous damping and thermal dissipation are significant. This result, which generalizes previous work…
Kibble-Zurek scaling is the scaling of the density of the topological defects formed via the Kibble-Zurek mechanism with respect to the rate at which a system is cooled across a continuous phase transition. Recently, the density of the…
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,…
The first order effect of Coulomb forces between the charged particles of a plasma is the well-known Debye-H\"uckel-term. It is a negative contribution to the pressure and energy of the gas, that at high densities will overwhelm the ideal…
In the first one of these two lectures, I give an introductory review of phase transitions in finite temperature field theories. I highlight the differences between theories with global and local symmetries, and the similarities between…
When traversing a symmetry breaking second order phase transition at a finite rate, topological defects form whose number dependence on the quench rate is given by simple power laws. We propose a general approach for the derivation of such…
Fluctuation effects at first order phase transitions driven by changes of other-than-temperature factors like pressure, concentration, or external fields are investigated by perturbation theory. The results for the fluctuation contributions…
Topological defects are produced during phase transitions in the very early Universe. They arise in most unified theories of strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions. These lectures focus on the role of topological defects in…
Phase transitions in the early Universe give rise to effective masses for massless fields in the symmetry-broken phase. We perform lattice simulations to study the dynamical impact of a mass-acquiring spectator field on the evolution of…
We consider Lagrangians in 3+1 dimensions admitting topological defects where there is an additional coupling between the defect scalar field $\Phi$ and the gauge field kinetic term (eg $B(\vert \Phi \vert^2) F_{\mu \nu}F^{\mu \nu}$). Such…
The scalar particle production from vacuum in the presence of electric field, on the de Sitter spacetime is studied. We use perturbation methods to define the transition amplitude. We obtain that the momentum is not conserved in this…
First order quantum phase transitions (1QPTs) are signaled, in the thermodynamic limit, by discontinuous changes in the ground state properties. These discontinuities affect expectation values of observables, including spatial correlations.…
We study the nonequilibrium dynamics leading to the formation of topological defects in a symmetry-breaking phase transition of a quantum scalar field with \lambda\Phi^4 self-interaction in a spatially flat, radiation-dominated…
We study the phase transition between the Coulomb liquid and the columnar crystal in the 3D classical dimer model, which was found to be continuous in the O(3) universality class. In addition to nearest neighbor interactions which favor…
We use the variational approximation with double Gaussian type trial wave-functional approximation, in which we use the square root of the dispersion of the zero-mode wave-function as an order parameter, to study the out of equilibrium…
Strongly first-order phase transitions, i.e., those with a large order parameter, are characterized by a considerable supercooling and high velocities of phase transition fronts. A very strong phase transition may have important…