Related papers: On the Decay Rate of the False Vacuum
The decay rate for a particle in a metastable cubic potential is investigated in the quantum regime by the Euclidean path integral method in semiclassical approximation. The imaginary time formalism allows one to monitor the system as a…
The semiclassical Euclidean path integral method is applied to compute the low temperature quantum decay rate for a particle placed in the metastable minimum of a cubic potential in a {\it finite} time theory. The classical path, which…
Temperature plays a crucial role in metastable phenomena, not only by contributing to determine the state (phase) of a system, but also ruling the decay probability to more stable states. Such a situation is encountered in many different…
Thermal escape out of a metastable well is considered in the weak friction regime, where the bottleneck for decay is energy diffusion, and at lower temperatures, where quantum tunneling becomes relevant. Within a systematic semiclassical…
We compute the effective potential for $\phi^4$ theory with a squeezed coherent state type of construct for the ground state. The method essentially consists in optimising the basis at zero and finite temperatures. The gap equation becomes…
We use a semiclassical approximation to derive the partition function for an arbitrary potential in one-dimensional Quantum Statistical Mechanics, which we view as an example of finite temperature scalar Field Theory at a point. We rely on…
We calculate the decay rate for a state prepared in a thermal density matrix centered on a metastable ground state. We find a rate that is intrinsically time {\it dependent}, as opposed to the {\it constant} rates of previous works. The…
In these notes we review some properties of Statistical Quantum Field Theory at equilibrium, i.e Quantum Field Theory at finite temperature. We explain the relation between finite temperature quantum field theory in (d,1) dimensions and…
We present a detailed discussion of some features of quantum mechanical metastability. We analyze the nature of decaying (quasistationary) states and the regime of validity of the exponencial law, as well as decays at finite temperature. We…
We compute the partition function and specific heat for a quantum mechanical particle under the influence of a quartic double-well potential non-perturbatively, using the semiclassical method. Near the region of bounded motion in the…
A metastable state, or a false vacuum, is not an eigenstate of the Hamiltonian in quantum field theory. Its energy density has a non-zero imaginary part equal to its decay width. Therefore, supersymmetry cannot be exact in the false vacuum.…
Both in atomic physics and in mesoscopic physics it is sometimes interesting to consider the energy time-dependence of a parametrically-driven chaotic system. We assume an Hamiltonian ${\cal H}(Q,P;x(t))$ where $x(t)=Vt$. The velocity $V$…
We study the decay of survival probability at quantum phase transitions (QPT). The semiclassical theory is found applicable in the vicinities of critical points with infinite degeneracy. The theory predicts a power law decay of the survival…
We derive the fluctuation theorem for quantum-state statistics that can be obtained when we initially measure the total energy of a quantum system at thermal equilibrium, let the system evolve unitarily, and record the quantum-state data…
In this paper we expand our previous investigation of a quantum particle subject to the action of a random potential plus a fixed harmonic potential at a finite temperature T. In the classical limit the system reduces to a well-known…
The quantum potential is shown to result from the presence of a subtle thermal vacuum energy distributed across the whole domain of an experimental setup. Explicitly, its form is demonstrated to be exactly identical to the heat distribution…
Understanding the emergence of chaos in many-body quantum systems away from semi-classical limits, particularly in spatially local interacting spin Hamiltonians, has been a long-standing problem. In these intrinsically quantum regimes,…
In this paper we consider quantum metastability in a class of moving potentials introduced by Berry and Klein. Potential in this class has its height and width scaled in a specific way so that it can be transformed into a stationary one. In…
We show that when the thermal wavelength is comparable to the spatial size of a system, thermodynamic observables like Pressure and Volume have quantum fluctuations that cannot be ignored. They are now represented by operators; conventional…
The decay of a metastable system is described by extending Kramers' method to the quantal regime. For temperatures above twice the crossover value we recover the result known from applying Euclidean path integrals to solvable models. Our…