Homogeneous and heterogeneous nucleation in the three--state Blume--Capel model

Abstract: The metastable behavior of the stochastic Blume--Capel model with Glauber dynamics is studied when zero-boundary conditions are considered. The presence of zero-boundary conditions changes drastically the metastability scenarios of the model: \emph{heterogeneous nucleation} will be proven in the region of the parameter space where the chemical potential is larger than the external magnetic field.