title: Droplet nucleation and domain wall motion in a bounded interval.
abstract: We study a spatially extended model of noise-induced magnetization reversal: a classical Ginzburg-Landau model, restricted to a bounded interval and perturbed by weak spatiotemporal noise. By adapting the Coleman-Langer approach to false vacuum decay, we determine the dependence of the activation barrier and Kramers rate prefactor on the interval length. As it increases, a transition between activation regimes occurs, at which the prefactor diverges. Similar transitions between activation regimes should occur in many other bistable, spatially extended classical models.
authors.affiliation: Mathematics Department, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA.
authors.forename: R S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Maier
authors.forename: D L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Stein