Related papers: Tunneling decay of false kinks
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…
It is shown that tunneling rates can be defined in terms of a false-vacuum effective action whose reality and convexity properties differ from those of the corresponding groundstate functional. The tunneling rate is directly related to the…
Using a new approach to the analysis of false vacuum decay based on the so-called tunneling potential, we develop a general method to find scalar potentials with a false vacuum with exactly solvable decay at the semi-classical level,…
The decay rates of quasistable states in quantum field theories are usually calculated using instanton methods. Standard derivations of these methods rely in a crucial way upon deformations and analytic continuations of the physical…
Coleman tunneling in a general scalar potential with two non-degenerate minima is known to have an approximation in terms of a piecewise linear triangular-shaped potential with sharp 'kinks' at the place of the local minima. This…
Quantum tunneling of vortices has been found to be an important novel phenomena for description of low temperature creep in high temperature superconductors (HTSCs). We speculate that quantum tunneling may be also exhibited in mesoscopic…
The false vacuum decay has been a central theme in physics for half a century with applications to cosmology and to the theory of fundamental interactions. This fascinating phenomenon is even more intriguing when combined with the…
We study tunneling in one-dimensional quantum mechanics using the path integral in real time, where solutions of the classical equation of motion live in the complex plane. Analyzing solutions with small (complex) energy, relevant for…
Recent theoretical investigations of the decay mechanism out of a superdeformed nuclear band have yielded qualitatively different results, depending on the relative values of the relevant decay widths. We present a simple two-level model…
A standard approach to analyzing tunneling processes in various physical contexts is to use instanton or imaginary time path techniques. For systems in which the tunneling takes place in a time dependent setting, the standard methods are…
We consider a formalism to describe the false-vacuum decay of a scalar field in gauge theories in non-perturbative regimes. We find that the larger the gauge coupling with respect to the self-coupling of the scalar, the shallower the local…
A new approach to vacuum decay in quantum field theory, based on a simple variational formulation in field space using a tunneling potential, is ideally suited to study the effects of gravity on such decays. The method allows to prove in…
The quantum decay of a relativistic scalar field from a metastable state ("false vacuum decay") is a fundamental idea in quantum field theory and cosmology. This occurs via local formation of bubbles of true vacuum with their subsequent…
We investigate tunneling decay in a magnetic field. Because of broken time-reversal symmetry, the standard WKB technique does not apply. The decay rate and the outcoming wave packet are found from the analysis of the set of the particle…
Vacuum decay in de Sitter space is a process of great physical interest, as it allows to rule out cosmological models in the early and current Universe. Its rate may be described in terms of an instanton in Euclidean space called bounce and…
In the thin-wall approximation, the decay of a gravitating false vacuum to a lower-energy state is affected by the cosmological horizon structure in both spaces. The nucleation radius of a bubble of true vacuum depends on the surface…
In the absence of gravity, one can prove that tunnelling instantons exhibit exactly one negative mode in their spectrum of fluctuations. It is precisely the existence of this tunnelling negative mode that warrants an interpretation of these…
In this work we consider kink-antikink and antikink-kink collisions in a modified $\phi^4$ model with a false vacuum characterized by a dimensionless parameter $\epsilon$. The usual $\phi^4$ model is recovered for $\epsilon=0$. We…
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 present a fast and efficient method for studying vacuum stability constraints in multi-scalar theories beyond the Standard Model. This method is designed for a reliable use in large scale parameter scans. The minimization of the scalar…