Modulation of the nucleation rate pre-exponential in a low-temperature Ising system

A metastable lattice gas with nearest-neighbor interactions and continuous-time dynamics is studied using a generalized Becker-Doring approach in the multidimensional space of cluster configurations. The pre-exponential of the metastable state lifetime (inverse of nucleation rate) is found to exhibit distinct peaks at integer values of the inverse supersaturation. Peaks are unobservable (infinitely narrow) in the strict limit T->0, but become detectable and eventually dominate at higher temperatures.Comment: 4 pages, 2 Postscript figures, LaTeX, submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. Changes: updated references, re-written section around eqs.(5),(6), typos, minor wording changes in conclusion and other parts of text (mostly in response to referees' comments). Paper resubmitted to PR

Comment on “Crystallization of Supercooled Liquids: Self-Consistency Correction of the Steady-State Nucleation Rate” by Abyzov et al., Entropy 2020, 22, 558

It is shown that in the growth region (above the critical nucleation size) the transient distributions obtained numerically from the Becker-Döring equation (BDE) by Abyzov et al., Entropy 2020, 22, 558, are in accurate correspondence with the matched asymptotic (singular perturbation) solution by Shneidman, Sov. Phys. Tech. Phys. 1988, 33, 1338. The solution is unmodified by “self-consistency” corrections which affect only the steady state rate. Sensitivity of the results to selection of a specific form of the BDE (the “nucleation model”) also is briefly discussed