Time lag in nucleation: Monte Carlo simulations

Numerical simulations show that the time lag between the quench and the establishment of a steady-state regime of nucleation depends on the quench rate. For the fast quenches the time lag is found to be exponentially, rather than linearly, dependent on the radius of the critical nucleus. It is shown qualitatively that the time lag for slow quenches is smaller than that for the fast quenches. All these results are obtained in the framework of Glauber dynamics. For Kawasaki dynamics it is much harder to detect the beginning of the steady-state regime, and the results are less convincing.