Supercooling across first-order phase transitions induced by density variation

Abstract

We extend the standard treatment of supercooling across a first-order phase transition to consider the case when both temperature (T) and pressure (p) are varied. While the limit of metastability is independent of the path followed in (p,T) space, we shall argue that the observable region of metastability will depend on this path. We make comparisons between the observable region of metastability when (i) p is varied monotonically at constant T, and (ii) when small oscillations in p (at constant T) are also introduced, with the limiting region of metastability observable when only T is varied.