Inhomogeneous nucleation in quark hadron phase transition
نویسنده
چکیده
The effect of subcritical hadron bubbles on a first-order quark-hadron phase transition is studied. These subcritical hadron bubbles created due to thermal fluctuations introduce a finite amount of phase mixing (quark phase mixed with hadron phase) even at and above the critical temperature. For sufficiently strong transitions, as is expected to be the case for the quark-hadron transition, we show that the amount of phase mixing at the critical temperature remains much below the percolation threshold. Thus, as the system cools below the critical temperature, the transition proceeds through the nucleation of critical-size hadron bubbles from a metastable quark-gluon phase (QGP) within an inhomogeneous background populated by an equilibrium distribution of subcritical hadron bubbles. The inhomogeneity of the medium is incorporated consistently by modeling the subcritical bubbles as Gaussian fluctuations, resulting in a large reduction of the nucleation barrier for the critical bubbles. Using the corrected nucleation barrier, we estimate the amount of supercooling for different parameters controlling the phase transition. PACS number(s): 12.38.Mh, 64.60.Qb, 05.70.Fh, 25.75-q, 98.80.Cq
منابع مشابه
0 Inhomogeneous nucleation in quark - hadron phase transition
The effect of subcritical hadron bubbles on a first-order quark-hadron phase transition is studied. These subcritical hadron bubbles are created due to thermal fluctuations, and can introduce a finite amount of phase mixing (quark phase mixed with hadron phase) even at and above the critical temperature. For reasonable choices of surface tension and correlation length, as obtained from the latt...
متن کاملOn the nucleation of hadronic domains in the quark-hadron transition
We present numerical results on bubble profiles, nucleation rates and time evolution for a weakly first-order quark-hadron phase transition in different expansion scenarios. We confirm the standard picture of a cosmological first-order phase transition, in which the phase transition is entirely dominated by nucleation. We also show that, even for expansion rates much lower than those expected i...
متن کاملLarge nucleation distances from impurities in the cosmological quark-hadron transition.
We calculate the mean nucleation distance, dnuc, in a rst order cosmological quark-hadron phase transition. For homogeneous nucleation we nd that self-consistent inclusion of curvature energy reduces dnuc to < 2cm. However, impurities can lead to heterogeneous nucleation with dnuc of several meters, a value high enough to change the outcome of Big Bang nucleosynthesis. 98.80.Cq, 12.38.Mh, 12.39...
متن کاملCluster growth in two-dimensional quark-hadron phase transition.
The problem of hadronic cluster production in heavy-ion collisions is studied in search for an observable signature of first-order quark-hadron phase transition. The study is carried out by cellular automata in a two-dimensional model of the mixed phase at midrapidity. The clusters are allowed to grow as well as to coalesce upon collision. The distribution of cluster sizes is found to exhibit s...
متن کاملQcd Phase Transition and Primordial Density Perturbations
We analyze the effect of primordial density perturbations on the cosmic QCD phase transition. According to our results hadron bubbles nucleate at the cold perturbations. We call this mechanism inhomogeneous nucleation. We find the typical distance between bubble centers to be a few meters. This exceeds the estimates from homogeneous nucleation by two orders of magnitude. The resulting baryon in...
متن کامل