Incubation Time at Decomposition of Solid Solution – Stochastic Kinetic Mean-Field Versus Monte Carlo Simulation

Abstract

The comparison of two simulation techniques applied to the nucleation in a supersaturated solid solution is made. The first one is the well-known Monte Carlo (MC) method. The second one is a recently developed modification of the atomistic self-consistent non-linear mean-field method with the additionally introduced noise of local fluxes: Stochastic Kinetic Mean-Field (SKMF) method. The amplitude of noise is a tuning parameter of the SKMF method in its comparison with the Monte Carlo one. The results of two methods for the concentration and temperature dependences of the incubation period become close, if one extrapolates the SKMF data to a certain magnitude of the noise amplitude. The results of both methods are compared also with the Classical Nucleation Theory (CNT).