The thermal nucleation of kink-antikink pairs in an elastic string which was subjected to a washboard potential was analyzed in the limit of low temperature and high damping. The pair nucleation rate was calculated analytically for any value of tilt, almost up to the instability threshold. Finite-size effects were quantified by computing the relevant end-point nucleation rates for a wide range of boundary conditions. This work had applications in the study of lattice dislocations and flux lines in type-II superconducting materials.

Elastic Strings in Solids - Thermal Nucleation. F.Marchesoni, C.Cattuto, G.Costantini: Physical Review B, 1998, 57[13], 7930-6