Finite-Size Effects on Nucleation in a First-Order Phase Transition

Abstract

We discuss finite-size effects on homogeneous nucleation in first-order phase transitions. We study their implications for cosmological phase transitions and to the hadronization of a quark-gluon plasma generated in high-energy heavy ion collisions. Very general arguments allow us to show that the finite size of the early universe has virtually no relevance in the process of nucleation and in the growth of cosmological bubbles during the primordial quark-hadron and the electroweak phase transitions. In the case of high-energy heavy ion collisions, finite-size effects play an important role in the late-stage growth of hadronic bubbles.

6 pages, no figures, 1 reference added

References in corpus (4)

• Lattice Results on QCD Thermodynamics
• Explosive Decomposition in Ultrarelativistic Heavy Ion Collision
• Non-perturbative computation of the bubble nucleation rate in the cubic anisotropy model
• Nucleation versus Spinodal decomposition in a first order quark hadron phase transition

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• Proton and pion transverse spectra at RHIC from radial flow and finite size effects
• Finite size effects on pion spectra in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• The role of noise and dissipation in the hadronization of the quark-gluon plasma
• Iso-curvature fluctuations through axion trapping by cosmic string wakes