Related papers: A Consistent Calculation of Bubble-Nucleation Rate…
Phase transitions executed in a finite time show a domain structure with defects, that has been argued by Zurek and Kibble to depend in a characteristic way on the quench rate. In this letter we present an experiment to measure the…
Cold atomic gases offer the prospect of simulating the physics of the very early universe in the laboratory. In the condensate phase, the gas is described by a field theory with key features of high energy particle theory. This paper…
The field-theoretical description of quantum fluctuations on the background of a tunneling field $\sigma$ is revisited in the case of a functional Schrodinger approach. We apply this method in the case when quantum fluctuations are coupled…
We quantize subcritical bubbles which are formed in the weakly first order phase transition. We find that the typical size of the thermal fluctuation reduces in the quantum-statistical physics. We estimate the typical size and the amplitude…
We study the sensitivity of neutral-current neutrino-nucleus scattering to the strange-quark content of the axial-vector form factor of the nucleon. A model-independent formalism for this reaction is developed in terms of eight nuclear…
Motivated by our earlier argument that the apparent large cosmological constant from quantum fluctuations is actually an artifact of not using a full quantum mechanical superposition to determine the ground state in which the universe lives…
We present a phenomenological theory for phase turbulence (PT) in Rayleigh-B\'{e}nard convection, based on the generalized Swift-Hohenberg model. We apply a Hartree-Fock approximation to PT and conjecture a scaling form for the structure…
We investigate vapor homogeneous nucleation in a superheated Lennard Jones liquid with computer simulations. Special simulation techniques are required to address this study since the nucleation of a critical vapor bubble --one that has…
This talk is devoted to the problem how to compute relative nucleation probabilities of configurations with different topology and dimension in quantum cosmology. Assuming the semiclassical approximation, the usual formula for the…
The Tunneling Potential Formalism was introduced to calculate the tunneling actions that control vacuum decay as an alternative to the standard Euclidean Formalism. The new approach sets the problem as a simple variational problem in field…
We study the dynamics of a first-order phase transition in a strongly coupled gauge theory at non-zero temperature and chemical potential, computing nucleation rates and wall speeds from first principles. The gauge theory is the…
We study the formation of vortices in a U(1) gauge theory following a first-order transition proceeding by bubble nucleation, in particular the effect of a low velocity of expansion of the bubble walls. To do this, we use a two-dimensional…
We study the non-equilibrium dynamics of second-order phase transitions in a simplified Ginzburg-Landau model using the Fokker-Planck formalism. In particular, we focus on deriving the Kibble-Zurek scaling laws that dictate the dependence…
We develop a theory for nucleation on top of islands in epitaxial growth based on the derivation of lifetimes and rates governing individual microscopic processes. These processes are strongly affected by the additional step edge barrier…
We compute rates and pathways for nucleation in a sheared two dimensional Ising model with Metropolis spin flip dynamics, using Forward Flux Sampling (FFS). We find a peak in the nucleation rate at intermediate shear rate. We analyse the…
Accurate estimate of nucleation rate is crucial for the study of ice nucleation and ice-promoting/anti-freeze strategies. Within the framework of Classical Nucleation Theory (CNT), the estimate of ice nucleation rate is very sensitive to…
The QCD axion in the pre-inflation scenario faces a stringent isocurvature constraint, which requires a relatively low Hubble scale during inflation. If the axion was heavier than the Hubble scale during inflation, its isocurvature is…
The formation of crystals has proven to be one of the most challenging phase transformations to quantitatively model - let alone to actually understand - be it by means of the latest experimental technique or the full arsenal of enhanced…
We consider the decay of "false kinks," that is, kinks formed in a scalar field theory with a pair of degenerate symmetry-breaking false vacua in 1+1 dimensions. The true vacuum is symmetric. A second scalar field and a peculiar potential…
We consider the construction of point processes from tilings, with equal volume tiles, of d-dimensional Euclidean space. We show that one can generate, with simple algorithms ascribing one or more points to each tile, point processes which…