English

Saddle-point approximation to the false vacuum decay at finite temperature in one-dimensional quantum mechanics

High Energy Physics - Theory 2024-12-25 v3

Abstract

We calculate the false-vacuum decay rate in one-dimensional quantum mechanics on the basis of the saddle-point approximation in the Euclidean path integral at finite temperature. The saddle points are the finite-T and shifted bounce solutions, which are finite-period analogs of the (zero-temperature) bounce solution, and the shot solutions. We re-examined the zero-temperature result by Callan and Coleman and compare with the zero-temperature limit of our results. We also perform some numerical calculations to illustrate the temperature dependence of the decay rate and compare it with the result by Affleck.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2410.19418,
  title  = {Saddle-point approximation to the false vacuum decay at finite temperature in one-dimensional quantum mechanics},
  author = {Koji Harada and Shuichiro Tao and Qiang Yin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.19418},
  year   = {2024}
}