Instruct: Identify the main and secondary category of Arxiv papers based on the titles and abstracts
Query: On the dynamics of phase transitions and the nonequilibrium formation of
  topological defects   We study the formation of topological defects in nonequilibrium phase
transitions of both classical and quantum field theory. We examine three model
systems. 1). The phase transition of a quantum scalar field in a FRW universe
is analyzed through a first-principles approach in which the dynamics of the
two-point function is derived from the two-loop, two-particle-irreducible
closed-time-path effective action. Identifying signatures of correlated domains
in the infrared portion of the momentum-space power spectrum we find that the
domain size scales as a power-law with the expansion rate of the universe. The
observed power-law scaling is in good agreement with the predictions of the
Kibble-Zurek mechanism of defect formation and provides evidence of the
freeze-out scenario in the context of nonequilibrium quantum field theory. 2).
The formation and interaction of topological textures is analyzed in the phase
transition of a classical O(3) scalar field theory in 2+1 dimensions. We
provide quantiive arguments that by the end of the transition the length scales
of the texture distribution result from a competition between the length scale
determined at freeze-out and the ordering dynamics of a textured system. 3). We
discuss a black hole phase transition in semiclassical gravity. We review the
thermodynamics of a black hole system and determine that the phase transition
is entropically driven. We introduce a quantum atomic model of the equilibrium
black hole system and show that the phase transition is realized as the abrupt
excitation of a high energy state. We investigate the nonequilibrium dynamics
of the black hole phase transition and explore similar examples from the
Kosterlitz-Thouless transition in condensed matter to the Hagedorn transition
in string theory.

21
The categories of this paper are: adap-org
22
The categories of this paper are: chao-dyn
11
The categories of this paper are: hep-lat
6
The categories of this paper are: astro-ph
24
The categories of this paper are: dg-ga
7
The categories of this paper are: hep-th
36
The categories of this paper are: cmp-lg
2
The categories of this paper are: math
27
The categories of this paper are: comp-gas
15
The categories of this paper are: nucl-ex
19
The categories of this paper are: eess
33
The categories of this paper are: plasm-ph
10
The categories of this paper are: q-bio
16
The categories of this paper are: stat
8
The categories of this paper are: hep-ex
3
The categories of this paper are: physics