Related papers: False Vacuum Transitions - Analytical Solutions an…
Non-equilibrium phase transitions of a scalar field in an expanding spacetime are discussed. These transitions are shown to lead, for appropriate potential energy functions, to a biased choice of vacuum structure which can be analytically…
We derive simple expressions to regularise functional determinants from fluctuations of fields with spin 0, 1/2, and 1. These are important for the precise dimensionful determination of false vacuum decay rates. We work in $D = 4$ Euclidean…
We use analytic estimates and numerical simulations to explore the stochastic approach to vacuum decay. According to this approach, the time derivative of a scalar field, which is in a local vacuum state, develops a large fluctuation and…
Recently, a novel phenomenon is observed for vacuum decay to proceed via classically allowed dynamical evolution from initial configurations of false vacuum fluctuations. With the help of some occasionally developed large fluctuations in…
We consider a single real scalar field in flat spacetime with a polynomial potential up to $\phi^4$, that has a local minimum, the false vacuum, and a deeper global minimum, the true vacuum. When the vacua are almost degenerate we are in…
In the standard lore the decay of the false vacuum of a single-field potential is described by a semi-classical Euclidean bounce configuration that can be found using overshoot/undershoot algorithms, and whose action suppresses…
We study tunneling between vacua in multi-dimensional field spaces. Working in the strict thin wall approximation, we find that the conventional instantons for false vacuum decay develop a new vanishing eigenvalue in their fluctuation…
We compute bounce solutions describing false vacuum decay in a Phi**4 model in four dimensions with quantum back-reaction. The back-reaction of the quantum fluctuations on the bounce profiles is computed in the one-loop and Hartree…
We study the evolution of biased domain walls in the early universe. We explicitly discuss the roles played by the surface tension and volume pressure in the evolution of the walls, and quantify their effects by looking at the collapse of…
The dynamics of false vacuum decay at the end of inflation is studied. It is shown that the creation of a new phase is mainly stimulated by temperature fluctuations. Moving walls of O(3)-symmetric bubbles weakly interact with their…
We study the Euclidean bounce action interpolating between a false and a true vacuum for a scalar field theory with various types of potential. We focus on the cases of a triangular, a square and a quadratic barrier, where the bounce action…
Domain wall networks are two-dimensional topological defects generally predicted in many beyond standard model physics. In this Letter, we propose to solve the domain wall problem with the first-order phase transition. We numerically study…
In this Letter, we numerically present the possibility of the first-order phase transition occurring through the thermal fluctuation in the early universe. We find that when the temperature is slightly higher than the mass scale of the…
We introduce a new picture of vacuum decay which, in contrast to existing semiclassical techniques, provides a real-time description and does not rely on classically-forbidden tunneling paths. Using lattice simulations, we observe vacuum…
We investigate false vacuum decay of a relativistic scalar field initialized in the metastable minimum of an asymmetric double-well potential. The transition to the true ground state is a well-defined initial-value problem in real time,…
This paper studies the decay of a large, closed domain wall in a closed universe. Such walls can form in the presence of a broken, discrete symmetry. We introduce a novel process of quantum decay for such a wall, in which the vacuum…
We treat the effects of quantum field fluctuations on the decay of a meta-stable state of a self-coupled scalar field. We consider two varieties of field fluctuations and their potential effects in a semiclassical description. The first are…
The contribution from quantum vacuum fluctuations of a real massless scalar field to the motion of a test particle that interacts with the field in the presence of a perfectly reflecting flat boundary is here investigated. There is no…
We present a fully analytical calculation of the false vacuum decay rate for a self-interacting scalar field in the thin-wall approximation. We obtain the bounce solution, together with the Euclidean action, counter-terms and…
A class of oscillating Lorentz covariant configurations for the evolution of the domain walls in diverse dimensions are analytically obtained. It is shown that the oscillating solutions in the case of domain walls are responsible for…