Dresden 2026 – scientific programme
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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 43: Poster: Statistical Physics
DY 43.1: Poster
Wednesday, March 11, 2026, 15:00–18:00, P5
Extended classical nucleation theory for active phase separation in the reversed Ostwald regime — •Wanja Becker1, Cesare Nardini2,3, and Michael te Vrugt1 — 1Institut für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 55128 Mainz, Germany — 2Service de Physique de l'Etat Condensé, CEA, CNRS Université Paris-Saclay, CEA-Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France — 3Sorbonne Université, CNRS, Laboratoire de Physique Théorique de la Matière Condensée, 75005 Paris, France
Classical nucleation theory (CNT) is a model to describe how rare fluctuations lead to nucleation and thus describes the kinetics of phase transitions. In Ref. [1], CNT was extended to describe phase separation in Active Model B+ - a scalar field theory for active matter - for the case of positive active surface tension. Here, we further extend the theory to be applicable for negative active surface tensions. In this regime a stable fixed-point radius is expected to be found. Droplets smaller than this radius grow and droplets larger than this radius shrink, i.e. reverse Ostwald ripening. In Ref. [1], the theory was formulated by expanding the order parameter in powers of 1/R, up to order 1/R. Here, terms of order 1/R^2 are included to describe nucleation for negative surface tension. In doing this the effective potential acquires an additional linear contribution. We calculate the prefactor of the linear contribution numerically to determine whether it suffices to capture the nucleation of droplets at negative surface tension that afterwards grow by reversed Ostwald processes.
[1] M. E. Cates and C. Nardini, Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 098203 (2023)
Keywords: Active matter; Classical nucleation theory; Phase separation