Related papers: Tunneling decay of false kinks
The false vacuum is a metastable state that can occur in quantum field theory, and its decay was first studied semi-classically by Coleman. In this work we consider the 1+1 dimensional $\varphi^4$ theory, which is the simplest model that…
We describe a new method which allows one to evaluate the false vacuum decay rate for a general potential which may depend on an arbitrary number of scalar fields.
The tunneling potential formalism makes it easy to construct exact solutions to the vacuum decay problem in potentials with multiple fields. While some exact solutions for single-field decays were known, we present the first nontrivial…
We revisit the formalism for tunneling in quantum field theory developed by Coleman and collaborators. In particular using the generalization of WKB methods for tunneling in quantum mechanics we avoid the problems with negative eigenvalues…
The decay rate of a false vacuum is determined by the minimal action solution of the tunnelling field: bounce. In this Letter, we focus on models with scalar fields which have a canonical kinetic term in $N(>2)$ dimensional Euclidean space,…
Motivated by cosmological examples we study quantum field theoretical tunnelling from an initial state where the "classical field", i.e. the vacuum expectation value of the field operator is spatially homogeneous but performing a…
We revisit the famous Coleman-de Luccia formalism for decay of false vacuum in gravitational theory. Since the corresponding wave function is time-independent we argue that its instanton's interpretation as the decay rate probability is…
Some false vacua do not decay via bounces. This usually happens when a flat direction of the tunneling action due to scale invariance is lifted to a sloping valley by a scale breaking perturbation, pushing the bounce off to infinity. We…
If a theory has more than one classically stable vacuum, quantum tunneling and thermal jumps make the transition between the vacua possible. The transition happens through a first order phase transition started by nucleation of a bubble of…
We study false vacuum decays catalysed by magnetic monopoles which act as tunnelling sites with exponentially enhanced decay rates. The field profiles describing the decay do not have the typically assumed $O(3)/O(4)$ symmetry, thus…
We consider the decay of cosmic strings that are trapped in the false vacuum in a theory of scalar electrodynamics in 3+1 dimensions. We restrict our analysis to the case of thin-walled cosmic strings which occur when large magnetic flux…
We study the decay rate of a false vacuum in gauge theory at the one-loop level. We pay particular attention to the case where the bounce consists of an arbitrary number of scalar fields. With a multi-field bounce, which has a curved…
We investigate the decay of current on a superconducting cosmic string through quantum tunneling. We construct the instanton describing tunneling in a simple bosonic string model, and estimate the decay rate. The tunneling rate vanishes in…
A method to determine the quantum state of a scalar field after $O(4)$-symmetric bubble nucleation has been developed recently. The method has an advantage that it concisely gives us a clear picture of the resultant quantum state. In…
The semiclassical formalism for numerical calculation of the rate of tunneling transitions induced by N particles with total energy E of order or higher than the height of the barrier is developed. The formalism is applied to the induced…
It is shown that, to the lowest order in $\hbar,$ the particle production related to the tunneling that leads to the false vacuum decay is described by the orthogonal part of fluctuation field with respect to the bounce solution. As a…
We study the decay of "false" domain walls, which are metastable states of the quantum theory where the true vacuum is trapped inside the wall, with the false vacuum outside. We consider a theory with two scalar fields, a shepherd field and…
Tunneling half lives are obtained in a minimalistic deformation picture of nuclear decays. As widely documented in other deformation models, one finds that the effective mass of the nucleus changes with the deformation parameter. However,…
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…
Quantum mechanics makes the otherwise stable vacua of a theory metastable through the nucleation of bubbles of the new vacuum. This in turn causes a first order phase transition. These cosmological phase transitions may have played an…