1 research outputs found
On the athermal character of structural phase transitions
The significance of thermal fluctuations on nucleation in structural
first-order phase transitions has been examined. The prototype case of
martensitic transitions has been experimentally investigated by means of
acoustic emission techniques. We propose a model based on the mean
first-passage time to account for the experimental observations. Our study
provides a unified framework to establish the conditions for isothermal and
athermal transitions to be observed.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted in Phys. Rev. Let