Vacuum decay in the Lorentzian path integral
High Energy Physics - Theory
2024-12-13 v3 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Abstract
We apply the Lorentzian path integral to the decay of a false vacuum and estimate the false-vacuum decay rate. To make the Lorentzian path integral convergent, the deformation of an integral contour is performed by following the Picard-Lefschetz theory. We show that the nucleation rate of a critical bubble, for which the corresponding bounce action is extremized, has the same exponent as the Euclidean approach. We also extend our computation to the nucleation of a bubble larger or smaller than the critical one to which the Euclidean formalism is not applicable.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2112.09284,
title = {Vacuum decay in the Lorentzian path integral},
author = {Takumi Hayashi and Kohei Kamada and Naritaka Oshita and Jun'ichi Yokoyama},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.09284},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
26 pages, 5 figures; v3: references added, typos corrected