Nucleation in complex systems

Title: Nucleation in complex systems Author: Jan Kulveit Institute: Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences Supervisor: prof. Pavel Demo, Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy ofSciences, Department of Optical Materials Abstract: We studied nucleation in progressively more abstract contexts and systems, starting from classical nucleation theory and ending with nucleation in complex networks. The cases studied include impurity nucleation in a solid matrix on several alkali halide crystals, where we determined formation energies for clusters, treated as defects, starting from single impurity-vacancy dipole and small aggregates to possible configurations of larger clusters. In the next part, we turn to the study of heterogeneous nucleation. While in the usual treatment of heterogeneous nucleation the surface energy is assumed to be homogenous, we ask the question what happens if we consider the surface energy to be heteroge- neous.Utilizing umbrella sampling computer simulations we find the nucleation barrier can be significantly lowered in the presence of surface heterogeneity, even if the average surface energy is kept constant. In the last part we study influence of clustering coefficient on phase transitions in scale-free networks, using forward flux sampling (FFS). Keywords: nucleation,..