Stochastic description of phase separation near the spinodal curve in alloys

The earlier-developed statistical methods for nonequilibrium alloys are applied to stochastically describe phase separation near the spinodal curve. An important parameter of the theory is the size of local equilibrium regions, which is estimated using simulations for the different values of this parameter. The simulations based on this approach reveal significant changes in the type of evolution from nucleation to spinodal decomposition under variation of concentration and temperature across the spinodal curve. The scale of these changes seems to be mainly determined by the difference of the properly defined supersaturation parameters.