Brane tunneling and virtual brane-antibrane pairs
High Energy Physics - Theory
2017-09-26 v2
Abstract
We survey barrier penetration by quantum tunneling for four cases: nonrelativistic point particles, scalar fields, relativistic point particles, and DBI branes. We examine two novel features that arise for DBI brane tunneling: the rate can sometimes increase as the barrier gets higher; and the instanton "wrinkles". We show that these features can be understood as the effect of the quantum sea of virtual brane-antibrane pairs. This sea exponentially augments the decay rate, with possible cosmological consequences.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0709.3532,
title = {Brane tunneling and virtual brane-antibrane pairs},
author = {Adam R. Brown},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0709.3532},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
v2: fixed 10-year-old typo