The microscopic theory of clustering and nucleation

The fundamental theoretical interest in nucleation is that it is an important example of metastability. A transition phenomenon from an unstable state to a stable one, which may be understood from a potential in one dimension, is shown. The source of this potential may be viewed as the potential determining the steady solution to a Fokker-Planck equation, or on a macroscopic-continuum level a Ginsberg-Landau free energy. The partition function description of condensation and clusters is discussed