{
  "abstract": "The celebrated Kibble-Zurek mechanism (KZM) characterizes the nonequilibrium dynamics of second-order phase transitions and predicts universal scaling of the average number of defects with the quench time. However, the KZM is not directly applicable to first-order phase transitions, where defect formation is instead governed by nucleation processes. Here, using a Ginzburg-Landau model, we investigate the defect-number statistics in a weakly first-order phase transition. We show that the resulting statistics contain signatures of both Kibble-Zurek dynamics and nucleation, revealing the interplay between these two defect-formation mechanisms. In particular, we find that the defect-number distribution evolves from approximately Gaussian to nearly Poissonian across the crossover from the KZM regime to nucleation-dominated defect formation. While the first two cumulants are well described by a simple additive estimate of the KZM and nucleation contributions, the third cumulant exhibits a plateau and an enhancement beyond this estimate, providing a sensitive probe of the interplay between the two defect-formation mechanisms.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2611.02022",
  "author_total": 4,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Antonin Rottman"
    },
    {
      "name": "Leonard Logarić"
    },
    {
      "name": "Fumika Suzuki"
    },
    {
      "name": "Adolfo del Campo"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/aqez0pmtrkdj3.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2611.02022",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "aqez0pmtrkdj3",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.02022",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "LicenseRef-arXiv-nonexclusive-1.0",
  "licence_label": "arXiv licence",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "cond-mat.stat-mech"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "hep-ph"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": null,
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2611.02022",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-11-01",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/aqez0pmtrkdj3.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-11-03T12:20:59Z",
      "native_id": "2611.02022",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.02022"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:hep-ph",
      "subfield": "high-energy"
    },
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:cond-mat.stat-mech",
      "subfield": "statistical-nonlinear"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Topological Defect Statistics in a Weakly First-Order Phase Transition",
  "title_text": "Topological Defect Statistics in a Weakly First-Order Phase Transition",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-05T15:20:18Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/aqez0pmtrkdj3",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}