Tufts/CfA/MIT Cosmology Seminar, at Harvard:

        Dr. Andrew Heckler
        Fermilab

        Tuesday, October 31, 1995
        2:30 pm, Jefferson 461
        Harvard Physics Department
        *** Note Room Change! This week only. ***

        "Nonperturbative Effects on Bubble Nucleation"

Abstract: A nonperturbative correction to the thermal nucleation rate
of critical bubbles in a first-order phase transition is estimated.
Using a simple model of a scalar field in a double-well potential, we
obtain a corrected potential which incorporates the free-energy density
available from large-amplitude fluctuations, which is not included in
the usual perturbative calculation. As an application of our method, we
show how these corrections can both qualitatively and quantitatively
explain anomalously high nucleation rates observed in 2-d numerical
simulations.