Fluctuations and Phase Transition Dynamics

Abstract

Kibble and Zurek have provided a unifying causal picture for the appearance of classical defects like cosmic strings or vortices at the onset of phase transitions in relativistic QFT and condensed matter systems respectively. In condensed matter the predictions are partially supported by agreement with experiments in superfluid helium. We provide an alternative picture for the initial appearance of defects that supports the experimental evidence. When the original predictions fail, this is understood, in part, as a consequence of thermal fluctuations (noise), which play a comparable role in both condensed matter and QFT.

Comments: 25 pages, to be published in the Proceedings of the Fourth Conference on Quantum and Stochastic Gravity, String Cosmology and Inflation, Peyresq, September, 1999