Many-body theory of false vacuum decay in quantum spin chains
Statistical Mechanics
2025-08-20 v1 Strongly Correlated Electrons
High Energy Physics - Lattice
High Energy Physics - Theory
Quantum Physics
Abstract
In this work we theoretically investigate the false vacuum decay process in a ferromagnetic quantum spin-1/2 chain. We develop a many-body theory describing the nucleation and the coherent dynamics of true-vacuum bubbles that is analytically tractable and agrees with numerical matrix product state calculations in all parameter regimes up to intermediate times. This bosonic theory allows us to identify different regimes in the parameter space and unravel the underlying physical mechanisms. In particular, regimes that closely correspond to the cosmological false vacuum decay picture are highlighted and characterized in terms of observable quantities.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2508.13780,
title = {Many-body theory of false vacuum decay in quantum spin chains},
author = {Christian Johansen and Alessio Recati and Iacopo Carusotto and Alberto Biella},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.13780},
year = {2025}
}