Nucleation and growth manifest universal scaling, surely

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that universal scaling behavior can be observed in nucleation and growth processes by extending existing methods, offering new insights into universality classes of phase transitions.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized approach to reveal universal scaling in nucleation and growth, bridging the gap between first-order and continuous phase transition phenomena.

Findings

Universal scaling manifests in nucleation and growth.

A non-universal initial time is key to observing scaling.

The method offers a new perspective on universality classes.

Abstract

When a system is brought to a metastable state, nuclei of the equilibrium phase form and grow. This is the well-known nucleation and growth of first-order phase transitions. Near a critical point of a continuous phase transition, critical phenomena such as critical opalescence characterized by universal scaling emerge. These two sets of behavior are so completely different that it might appear absurd to ask whether nucleation and growth exhibit even a slight universal scaling. Here we show that universal scaling is indeed manifested in standard nucleation and growth by introducing a non-universal initial time to a recently proposed method. This generalizes the method and provides a different perspective for studying universal scaling behavior and hence universality classes of nucleation and growth.