title: Lifetime of metastable states in a Ginzburg-Landau system: Numerical simulations at large driving forces.
abstract: We developed a "brute-force" simulation method and conducted numerical "experiments" on homogeneous nucleation in an isotropic system at large driving forces (not small supersaturations) using the stochastic Ginzburg-Landau approach. Interactions in the system are described by the asymmetric (no external field), athermal (temperature-independent driving force), tangential (simple phase diagram) Hamiltonian, which has two independent "drivers" of the phase transition: supersaturation and thermal noise. We obtained the probability distribution function of the lifetime of the metastable state and analyzed its mean value as a function of the supersaturation, noise strength, and volume. We also proved the nucleation theorem in the mean-field approximation. The results allowed us to find the thermodynamic properties of the barrier state and conclude that at large driving forces the fluctuating volumes are not independent.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physical Chemistry, National University of Science and Technology MISiS, 4 Leninsky Ave, 119049 Moscow, Russia and Department of Chemistry and Physics, Fayetteville State University, Fayetteville, North Carolina 28301, USA.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Umantsev