Related papers: On the Decoupling Theorem for Vacuum Metastability
We study a number of different ingredients related to the $\theta$ dependence, metastable excited vacuum states and other related subjects using a simplified version of QCD, the so-called "deformed QCD". This model is a weakly coupled gauge…
A tunneling bounce driving the decay of a metastable vacuum must respect an integral constraint dictated by simple scaling arguments that is very useful to determine key properties of the bounce. After illustrating how this works in a…
If the universe is trapped and cooled in a metastable false vacuum state, that state will eventually decay by bubble nucleation and expansion. For example, many extensions of the standard model incorporate new scalar fields whose potential…
The degrees of freedom of any interacting quantum field theory are entangled in momentum space. Thus, in the vacuum state, the infrared degrees of freedom are described by a density matrix with an entanglement entropy. We derive a relation…
We investigate the validity of effective field theory methods and the decoupling of heavy fields during inflation. Considering models of inflation in which the inflaton is coupled to a heavy (super-Hubble) degree of freedom initially in its…
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…
It is well known that the renormalization group equations depend on the scale where they are applied. This phenomenon is especially relevant for the massive fields in curved space, because the decoupling effects may be responsible for…
We consider the decay of vortices trapped in the false vacuum of a theory of scalar electrodynamics in 2+1 dimensions. The potential is inspired by models with intermediate symmetry breaking to a metastable vacuum that completely breaks a…
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…
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…
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…
Theories with compact extra dimensions are sometimes unstable to decay into a bubble of nothing -- an instability resulting in the destruction of spacetime. We investigate the existence of these bubbles in theories where the moduli fields…
The possibility of a landscape of metastable vacua raises the question of what fraction of vacua are truly long lived. Naively any would-be vacuum state has many nearby decay paths, and all possible decays must be suppressed. An interesting…
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…
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…
Quantum field theory defined on a noncommutative space is a useful toy model of quantum gravity and is known to have several intriguing properties, such as nonlocality and UV/IR mixing. They suggest novel types of correlation among the…
The amplitude of production of $n$ on-mass-shell scalar bosons by a highly virtual field $\phi$ is considered in a $\lambda \phi^4$ theory with weak coupling $\lambda$ and spontaneously broken symmetry. The amplitude of this process is…
We study the effects of internal symmetries on the decay by bubble nucleation of a metastable false vacuum. The zero modes about the bounce solution that are associated with the breaking of continuous internal symmetries result in an…
We point out that the (pseudo-)conformal Universe scenario may be realized as decay of conformally invariant, metastable vacuum, which proceeds via spontaneous nucleation and subsequent growth of a bubble of a putative new phase. We study…
False-vacuum decay between two morphologically distinct supersolid phases via bubble nucleation is studied in a uniform dipolar gas confined to the plane. Starting from a metastable honeycomb state, the formation of stripe phase domains is…