Phys. Rev. Lett. 67, 1266–1269 (1991)Dynamical mechanism for the formation of metastable phasesReceived 21 March 1991; published in the issue dated 2 September 1991 Rapid temperature quenches have long been known to produce metastable thermodynamic phases. We study Landau-Ginzburg models of phase transitions for free energies having three local minima and show that metastable phases can be formed via a dynamic instability that splits the front separating the stable high- and low-temperature phases. Even though quenching may nucleate the stable phase, the splitting instability we discuss will favor the formation of the metastable phase. © 1991 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.67.1266
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.67.1266
PACS:
64.60.My
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