English

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

R2 v1 2026-06-24T08:21:23.479Z