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Langer's Method For The Calculation Of Escape Rates And Its Application To Systems Of Ferromagnets, Gerard Duff
Langer's Method For The Calculation Of Escape Rates And Its Application To Systems Of Ferromagnets, Gerard Duff
Doctoral
This work is a study of the application of a theory proposed by J. S. Langer (J.S. Langer, Statistical Theory of the Decay of Metastable States, Annals of Physics 54, 258-275 (1969)) for the calculation of the decay rate (relaxation rate) of a metastable state. The theory is set in the context of statistical mechanics, where the dynamics of a system with a large number of degrees of freedom (order 1023) are reduced to N degrees of freedom, where N is small, when a steady state or equilibrium position is maintained by the entire system. In this thesis N equals …