Metastability in fluctuation-driven first-order transitions: Nucleation of lamellar phases

The nucleation of a lamellar phase from a supercooled homogeneous phase in a fluctuation-driven first-order transition is studied, based on a phenomenological free energy due to Brazovskii (Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz. 68, 175 (1975) Sov. Phys. JETP 41, 85 (1975)). The absence of phase coexistence in the corresponding mean-field approximation makes application of the standard droplet theory of homogeneous nucleation problematic. A self-consistent coarse-graining procedure is introduced to overcome this difficulty, and the barrier height for nucleation of a critical droplet is estimated in the weak-coupling limit. Contrary to earlier estimates, the critical droplet shape is shown to be anisotropic in general. Some effects of distortions and defects in the lamellar structure are considered and are shown to affect the critical droplet only very near coexistence, where the probability of nucleation vanishes. The coarse-graining procedure introduced here follows from a novel application of the momentum-shell renormalization-group method to systems in the Brazovskii class. Possible applications of the theory to the microphase separation transition in diblock copolymers and to Rayleigh-B\'enard convection are briefly discussed.