Related papers: On the Decoupling Theorem for Vacuum Metastability
We show that long-distance quantum correlations probe short-distance physics. Two disjoint regions of the latticized, massless scalar field vacuum are numerically demonstrated to become separable at distances beyond the negativity sphere,…
Dynamical decoupling is a key method to mitigate errors in a quantum mechanical system, and we studied it in a series of papers dealing in particular with the problems arising from unbounded Hamiltonians. The standard bangbang model of…
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…
We investigate the recent suggestion that a Minkowski vacuum is either absolutely stable, or it has a divergent decay rate and thus fails to have a locally Minkowski description. The divergence comes from boost integration over momenta of…
Non-decoupling effects of heavy scalars and vector fields play an important role in the indirect search of Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) physics at the LHC. By exploiting some new differential equations for the 1-PI amplitudes, we show…
We investigate the role of nonperturbative, bubble-like inhomogeneities on the decay rate of false-vacuum states in two and three-dimensional scalar field theories. The inhomogeneities are induced by setting up large-amplitude oscillations…
We investigate the metastability of scalar fields in quantum field theories at finite temperature, focusing on a detailed understanding of the bounce solution. At finite temperature, the bounce solution depends on two variables: the…
A study of the dynamics of a tunneling particle in a driven bistable potential which is moderately-to-strongly coupled to a bath is presented. Upon restricting the system dynamics to the Hilbert space spanned by the M lowest energy…
The valley structure associated with quantum meta-stability is examined. It is defined by the new valley equation, which enables consistent evaluation of the imaginary-time path-integral. We study the structure of this new valley equation…
Standard decoupling of heavy fermions may fail when there are non-perturbative variations in a scalar field which gives masses to the fermions. One situation of phenomenological relevance is the case of sphalerons in the presence of…
We discuss and clarify the validity of effective single field theories of inflation obtained by integrating out heavy degrees of freedom in the regime where adiabatic perturbations propagate with a suppressed speed of sound. We show by…
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 discuss non-perturbative instabilities, mediated by bubbles of nothing, in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence. By exploring the phase diagram of such decays we give an interpretation of the process in terms of an effective…
The interior of a vacuum bubble in de Sitter space may give an open universe with sufficient homogeneity to agree with observations. Here, previous work by Bucher, Goldhaber and Turok is extended to describe a thin bubble wall with nonzero…
A model that gives rise to vacuum bubbles is considered where the domain wall field interacts with another real scalar field, resulting in the formation of domain ribbons within the host domain wall. Ribbon-antiribbon annihilations produce…
Scale invariance supplemented by the requirement of the absence of new heavy particles may play an important role in addressing the hierarchy problem. We discuss how the Standard Model may become scale invariant at the quantum level above a…
Metastability is a quintessential feature of first order quantum phase transitions, which is lost either by dynamical instability or by nucleating bubbles of a true vacuum through quantum tunneling. By considering a drive across the first…
We review the description of tunnelling phenomena in the semi-classical approximation in ordinary quantum mechanics and in quantum field theory. In particular, we describe in detail the calculation, up to the first quantum corrections, of…
We describe a computational investigation of tunneling at finite energy in a weakly coupled quantum mechanical system with two degrees of freedom. We compare a full quantum mechanical analysis to the results obtained by making use of a…
The smallest classically stable Q-balls are, in fact, generically metastable: in quantum theory they decay into free particles via collective tunneling. We derive general semiclassical method to calculate the rate of this process in the…