Fluctuations and Phase Transition Dynamics

Abstract

Kibble and Zurek have provided a unifying causal picture for the appearance of classical defects like cosmic strings or vortices at the onset of phase transitions in relativistic QFT and condensed matter systems respectively. In condensed matter the predictions are partially supported by agreement with experiments in superfluid helium. We provide an alternative picture for the initial appearance of defects that supports the experimental evidence. When the original predictions fail, this is understood, in part, as a consequence of thermal fluctuations (noise), which play a comparable role in both condensed matter and QFT.

25 pages, to be published in the Proceedings of the Fourth Conference on Quantum and Stochastic Gravity, String Cosmology and Inflation, Peyresq, September, 1999

References in corpus (1)

• Slow ${}^{4}He$ Quenches Produce Fuzzy, Transient Vortices

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Nonequilibrium Quantum Dynamics of Second Order Phase Transitions
• Emergence of Classicality in Quantum Phase Transitions
• Topological defects as inhomogeneous condensates in Quantum Field Theory: Kinks in (1+1) dimensional $\la ψ^4$ theory
• Nonequilibrium Evolution of Correlation Functions: A Canonical Approach
• A Grand Canonical Ensemble Approach to the Thermodynamic Properties of the Nucleon in the Quark-Gluon Coupling Model
• Multiple-Scale Analysis and Renormalization of Quenched Second Order Phase Transitions
• The formation of vortex loops (strings) in continuous phase transitions