Collapse of Metastability: Dynamics of First-order Phase Transition

To understand phenomena in nature, it is important to focus not only on properties of stationary states, but also their changes in time, that is, the dynamics between bistable states. This book reviews the mechanics of first-order phase transitions and discusses relaxation and collapses of metastable states from various viewpoints, including Kramers' method for the lifetime of metastability, Langer’s analysis on the singularity, effects of thermal fluctuation studied by Néel and Brown, and eigenvalue structures of the transfer-matrix for the phase transitions. The book also goes into the mechanics of metastability in quantum systems from the viewpoints of the eigenvalue problem of the Hamiltonian and the Liouvillian for a dynamical process and discusses relations between quantum tunneling processes and metastability therein. Lastly, the coercivity of magnets consisting of an ensemble of grains is reviewed.

The book is beneficial for those new in the field as a primer on first-order phase transition from modern perspectives. The comprehensive content offers overviews of related topics and allows readers to quickly catch up with developments in the field.

Seiji Miyashita is an emeritus professor at The University of Tokyo. His work has been mainly involved in statistical physics and magnetism. He received his Doctor of Science from The University of Tokyo in 1981. He was an assistant professor at The University of Tokyo, moved to the Education and Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University as an associate Professor in 1988, and became a professor at the Department of Earth and Space Science, Osaka University. He moved to The University of Tokyo as a professor at the Department of Applied Physics in 1999, became a professor at the Department of Physics in 2005, and retired in 2020. Currently, he is also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Physical Society of Japan.