Related papers: Fubini instantons in curved space
Nontrivial topological structures of non-Abelian gauge fields were discovered in the 1970's. Instanton solutions, describing vacuum tunneling through topological barriers, have fermionic zero modes which are at the origin of $^\prime$t…
We recently investigated the nature of resonant tunnelling in standard scalar Quantum Field Theory, uncovering the conditions required for resonance. It was shown that whereas the homogeneous false vacuum may decay via bubble nucleation, it…
Motivated by our earlier argument that the apparent large cosmological constant from quantum fluctuations is actually an artifact of not using a full quantum mechanical superposition to determine the ground state in which the universe lives…
Semi-classical analysis is used to investigate synchronous quantum tunneling in a multidimensional potential energy surface (PES) characterized by four degenerate minima, serving as a foundational model for coupled vibrational modes. The…
The new phase of a gauge theory in which the instantons are ``polarized'', i.e. have the preferred orientation is discussed. A class of gauge theories with the specific condensates of the scalar fields is considered. In these models there…
The Wheeler-DeWitt equation is investigated and used to examine a state after a quantum tunneling with gravity. To make arguments definite we treat a discretized version of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation and adopt the WKB method. We expand an…
We revisit the path integral description of quantum tunneling and lay the groundwork for its generalization to excites states through real-time path integral techniques. For clarity, we focus on the simple toy model of a point particle in a…
Within the framework of the instanton approach we present analytical results for the following model problems: (i) particle penetration through a parabolic potential barrier, where the instanton solution practically coincides with the exact…
We consider the de Sitter cosmology deformed by the presence of a thermal bath of radiation and/or time-dependent moduli fields. Depending on the parameters, either a first or second order phase transition can occur. In the first case, an…
Instantons, localised saddle points of the action, play an important role in describing non-perturbative aspects of quantum field theories, for example vacuum decay or violation of conservation laws associated with anomalous symmetries.…
Motivated by the possibility of a string landscape, we reexamine tunneling of a scalar field across single/multiple barriers. Recent investigations have suggested modifications to the usual picture of false vacuum decay that lead to…
Physical properties of gravitational instantons which are derivable from minimal surfaces in 3-dimensional Euclidean space are examined using the Newman-Penrose formalism for Euclidean signature. The gravitational instanton that corresponds…
Bubbles of nothing (BoNs) describe the decay of spacetimes with compact dimensions and are thus of fundamental importance for many higher dimensional theories proposed beyond the Standard Model. BoNs admit a 4-dimensional description in…
Anomalous quantisation of instantons allows non-trivial (anti) self-dual configurations to exist for pure U(2) gauge theory in four-dimensional Euclidean space-time and to be used as ground state of the model. Six left fermions together…
This is a self-contained set of lecture notes on instantons in (super) Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions and in quantum mechanics. First the basics are derived from scratch: the regular and singular one-instanton solutions for Yang-Mills…
We allow a scalar field on a flat FLRW background metric to tunnel between two degenerate vacua. The resulting true vacuum state then violates the Null Energy Condition, and the corresponding homogeneous fluid induces a bounce, after which…
We investigate a self-gravitating thick domain wall for a $\lambda \Phi^4$ potential. The system of scalar and Einstein equations admits two types of non-trivial solutions: domain wall solutions and false vacuum-de Sitter solutions. The…
This talk is a review of our studies of instantons and their properties as seen in our lattice simulations of SU(2) gauge theory. We have measured the topological susceptibility and the size distribution of instantons in the QCD vacuum. We…
The catastrophic decay of a spacetime with compact dimensions, via bubbles of nothing (BoNs), is probably a generic phenomenon. BoNs admit a 4-dimensional description as singular Coleman-de Luccia bounces of the size modulus field,…
Within the framework of flux compactifications, we construct an instanton describing the quantum creation of an open universe from nothing. The solution has many features in common with the smooth 6d bubble of nothing solutions discussed…