dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaMetastability in Fluctuation Driven First-order Transitions: Nucleation of Lamellar Phases
| Authors | P. C. Hohenberg, J. B, Swift |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | patt-sol/9501004 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/patt-sol/9501004 |
| DOI | 10.1103/PhysRevE.52.1828 |
Abstract
The nucleation of a lamellar phase from a supercooled homogeneous phase in a fluctuation driven first-order transition is studied, based on a phenomenological free energy due to Brazovskii. The absence of phase coexistence in the corresponding mean-field approximation makes application of the standard droplet theory of homogeneous nucleation problematic. A self-consistent coarse-graining procedure is introduced to overcome this difficulty, and the barrier height for nucleation of a critical droplet is estimated in the weak-coupling limit. Contrary to earlier estimates the critical droplet shape is shown to be anisotropic in general. Some effects of distortions and defects in the lamellar structure are considered and are shown to affect the critical droplet only very near coexistence where the probability of nucleation vanishes. The coarse-graining procedure introduced here follows from a novel application of the momentum-shell renormalization group method to systems in the Brazovskii class. Possible applications of the theory to the microphase separation transition in diblock copolymers and to Rayleigh-B\'{e}nard convection are briefly discussed.
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"abstract": "The nucleation of a lamellar phase from a supercooled homogeneous phase in a\nfluctuation driven first-order transition is studied, based on a\nphenomenological free energy due to Brazovskii. The absence of phase\ncoexistence in the corresponding mean-field approximation makes application of\nthe standard droplet theory of homogeneous nucleation problematic. A\nself-consistent coarse-graining procedure is introduced to overcome this\ndifficulty, and the barrier height for nucleation of a critical droplet is\nestimated in the weak-coupling limit. Contrary to earlier estimates the\ncritical droplet shape is shown to be anisotropic in general. Some effects of\ndistortions and defects in the lamellar structure are considered and are shown\nto affect the critical droplet only very near coexistence where the probability\nof nucleation vanishes. The coarse-graining procedure introduced here follows\nfrom a novel application of the momentum-shell renormalization group method to\nsystems in the Brazovskii class. Possible applications of the theory to the\nmicrophase separation transition in diblock copolymers and to\nRayleigh-B\\\u0027{e}nard convection are briefly discussed.",
"arxiv_id": "patt-sol/9501004",
"authors": [
"P. C. Hohenberg",
"J. B",
"Swift"
],
"categories": [
"patt-sol",
"cond-mat",
"nlin.PS"
],
"doi": "10.1103/PhysRevE.52.1828",
"title": "Metastability in Fluctuation Driven First-order Transitions: Nucleation of Lamellar Phases",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/patt-sol/9501004"
},
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