Related papers: Chaotic instantons in scalar field theory
We study the path-integral formalism in the imaginary-time to show its validity in a case with a metastable ground state. The well-known method based on the bounce solution leads to the imaginary part of the energy even for a state that is…
The tunnelling of virtual matter-antimatter pairs from the quantum vacuum in multidimensions is studied. We consider electric backgrounds as a linear combination of a spatial Sauter field and, interchangeably, certain weaker time dependent…
We explain how nonperturbative effects can be systematically included when constructing an effective field theory. We concentrate in particular on the matching calculation, by which a low energy theory without a heavy particle degree of…
We study chaotic inflation driven by a real, massive, homogeneous minimally coupled scalar field in a flat Robertson-Walker spacetime. The semiclassical limit for gravity is considered, whereas the scalar field is treated quantum…
This is a brief summary of our studies of quantum field theories in a special limit in which the instantons are present, the anti-instantons are absent, and the perturbative corrections are reduced to one-loop. We analyze the corresponding…
The imaginary part of the one loop effective action in external backgrounds can be efficiently computed using worldline instantons which are closed periodic paths in spacetime. Exact solutions for nonstatic backgrounds are only known in…
We discuss the intimate connection between the chaotic dynamics of a classical field theory and the instability of the one-loop effective action of the associated quantum field theory. Using the example of massless scalar electrodynamics,…
Massless scalar fields originating in a quantum vacuum state acquire a scale-invariant spectrum of fluctuations in a matter-dominated contracting universe. We show that these isocurvature fluctuations transfer to a scale-invariant spectrum…
Instantons play a crucial role in understanding non-perturbative dynamics in quantum field theories, including those with spontaneously broken gauge symmetries. In the broken phase, finite-size instanton-like configurations are no longer…
The relation between connections on 2-dimensional manifolds and holomorphic bundles provides a new perspective on the role of classical gauge fields in quantum field theory in two, three and four dimensions. In particular we show that there…
We study the fate of a false vacuum in the case of a potential that contains a portion which is quartic and unbounded. We first prove that an $O(4)$ invariant instanton with the Coleman boundary conditions does not exist in this case. This,…
We revisit the quantum theory of a massive, minimally coupled scalar field, propagating on the Planck-era isotropic cosmological quantum spacetime which transitions to a classical spacetime in later times. The quantum effects modify the…
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…
In this talk we discuss the quantisation of a class of string cosmology models characterised by scale factor duality invariance. The amplitudes for the full set of classically allowed and forbidden transitions are computed by applying the…
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 consider the vacuum decay of the flat Minkowski space to an anti-de Sitter space. We find a one-parameter family of potentials that allow exact, analytical instanton solutions describing tunneling without barriers in the presence of…
We analyze vacuum tunneling in quantum field theory in a general formalism by using the Wigner representation. In the standard instanton formalism, one usually approximates the initial false vacuum state by an eigenstate of the field…
Divergences that arise in the quantization of scalar quantum field models by means of a lattice-space functional integration may be attributed to a single integration variable, and this fact is demonstrated by showing that if the integrand…
A form of stochastic perturbation theory is described, where the representative stochastic fields are generated instantaneously rather than through a Markov process. The correctness of the procedure is established to all orders of the…
We study Fubini instantons of a self-gravitating scalar field. The Fubini instanton describes the decay of a vacuum state under tunneling instead of rolling in the presence of a tachyonic potential. The tunneling occurs from the maximum of…