Systematically extending classical nucleation theory

Abstract

The foundation for any discussion of first-order phse transitions is Classical Nucleation Theory(CNT). CNT, developed in the first half of the twentieth century, is based on a number of heuristically plausible assumtptions and the majority of theoretical work on nucleation is devoted to refining or extending these ideas. Ideally, one would like to derive CNT from a more fundamental description of nucleation so that its extension, development and refinement could be developed systematically. In this paper, such a development is described based on a previously established (Lutsko, JCP 136:034509, 2012 ) connection between Classical Nucleation Theory and fluctuating hydrodynamics. Here, this connection is described without the need for artificial assumtions such as spherical symmetry. The results are illustrated by application to CNT with moving clusters (a long-standing problem in the literature) and the constructrion of CNT for ellipsoidal clusters.

References in corpus (4)

• Systematic Improvement of Classical Nucleation Theory
• Thermally activated vapor bubble nucleation: the Landau-Lifshitz/Van der Waals approach
• Density Functional Theory of Inhomogeneous Liquids IV. Squared-gradient approximation and Classical Nucleation Theory
• A Two-parameter Extension of Classical Nucleation Theory

Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Homogeneous Nucleation of Sheared Liquids: Advances and Insights from Simulations and Theory
• Statistical modeling of equilibrium phase transition in confined fluids
• Long-wavelength density fluctuations as nucleation precursors
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