Quark matter nucleation in hot hadronic matter

Understand

We study the quark deconfinement phase transition in hot $\beta$-stable hadronic matter.

• Assuming a first order phase transition, we calculate the enthalpy per baryon of the hadron-quark phase transition.
• We calculate and compare the nucleation rate and the nucleation time due to thermal and quantum nucleation mechanisms.
• We compute the crossover temperature above which thermal nucleation dominates the finite temperature quantum nucleation mechanism.