“…Metastability in fluids is a common phenomenon whose existence is unequivocally demonstrated by numerous experimental observations (see Skripov, 1973, for a comprehensive review). In addition, property measurements for metastable fluids yield well-defined, reproducible values (Schufle and Venugopalan, 1967;Zheleznyi, 1969;Gillen et al, 1972;Angell et al, 1973;Rasmussen et al, 1973;Chapman et al, 1975;Speedy and Angell, 1976;Richards and Trevena, 1976;Trinh and Apfel, 1978;Henderson and Speedy, 1980). These and other experimental studies unfortunately have not been accompanied by a corresponding progress in our theoretical understanding of metastability from a fundamental (molecular) viewpoint: lattice models with short range interactions, which are otherwise more realistic than mean field approaches for the quantitative description of matter under conditions where fluctuations are important, do not exhibit analytic continuation into the metastable region.…”