Erlangen 2026 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne
HK 32: Heavy-Ion Collisions and QCD Phases V
HK 32.5: Vortrag
Donnerstag, 19. März 2026, 15:00–15:15, PHIL C 601
Out-of-equilibrium scaling in driven first-order phase transitions — •Leon Sieke1, Jessica Fuchs1, and Lorenz von Smekal1,2 — 1Institut für Theoretische Physik, Justus-Liebig-Universität, 35392 Gießen, Germany — 2Helmholtz Forschungsakademie Hessen für FAIR (HFHF), Campus Gießen, 35392 Gießen, Germany
First-order and critical phase transitions behave qualitatively different under nearly adiabatic conditions. The former proceed through nucleation and growth, and are accompanied by metastability and hysteresis, while the latter feature diverging correlations and universal scaling. When transitions occur in finite time, non-equilibrium effects gain relevance, and this sharp distinction becomes blurred.
We investigate the real-time dynamics of a Z2-symmetric scalar field theory in the dynamic universality class of Model A in driven phase transitions across the first-order line using classical-statistical lattice simulations. We find that universal non-equilibrium scaling can emerge even in the first-order region, provided the driving is fast enough to avoid nucleation but slow enough for correlations to form. The resulting scaling behavior is analogous to the Kibble-Zurek mechanism and we compute the associated universal scaling functions for the order parameter.
Our results clarify how universal behavior can arise in driven first-order phase transitions and delineate the conditions under which nucleation, scaling, or trivial mean-field behavior dominate.
Keywords: non-equilibrium phase transitions; dynamic critical phenomena; classical-statistical simulations