Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-20-2005
Publication Title
Physical Review Letters
Department
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Abstract
We investigate the role played by fast quenching on the decay of metastable (or false vacuum) states. Instead of the exponentially slow decay rate per unit volume, ΓHN∼exp[−Eb/kBT] (Eb is the free energy of the critical bubble), predicted by homogeneous nucleation theory, we show that under fast enough quenching the decay rate is a power law ΓRN∼[Eb/kBT]−B, where B is weakly sensitive to the temperature. For a range of parameters, large-amplitude oscillations about the metastable state trigger the resonant emergence of coherent subcritical configurations. Decay mechanisms for different Eb are proposed and illustrated in a (2+1)-dimensional scalar field model.
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.151601
Dartmouth Digital Commons Citation
Gleiser, Marcelo and Howell, Rafael C., "Resonant Nucleation" (2005). Dartmouth Scholarship. 2013.
https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/facoa/2013
