Related papers: On the Decoupling Theorem for Vacuum Metastability
We present a mesoscale field theory unifying the modeling of growth, elasticity, and dislocations in quasicrystals. The theory is based on the amplitudes entering their density-wave representation. We introduce a free energy functional for…
We investigate quantum tunneling in the theory of a complex scalar field with a global $U(1)$ symmetry when the charge density of the initial configuration does not vanish. We discuss the possible final configurations and set up the…
False vacuum decay, which is understood to happen through bubble nucleation, is a prominent phenomenon relevant to elementary particle physics and early-universe cosmology. Understanding its microscopic dynamics in higher spatial dimensions…
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 standard model of strong interactions invokes the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) of quarks and gluons interacting within a fluid. At sufficiently small length scales, the effective interactions between the color charged particles within…
We explore the effects of heavy degrees of freedom on the evolution and perturbations of light modes in multifield inflation. We use a simple two-field model as an example to illustrate the subtleties of integrating out massive fields in a…
We study the effect of a bubble wall on the entanglement entropy of a free massive scalar field between two causally disconnected open charts in de Sitter space. We assume there is a delta-functional wall between the open charts. This can…
We find the novel effect on the decay of a false vacuum in view of quantum field theory, which is induced by a field coupling to the scalar field related to a first-order phase transition. This effect of the environment can never be…
We investigate the possible influence of very-high-energy physics on inflationary predictions focussing on whether effective field theories can allow effects which are parametrically larger than order H^2/M^2, where M is the scale of heavy…
As a function of packing fraction at zero temperature and applied stress, an amorphous packing of spheres exhibits a jamming transition where the system is sensitive to boundary conditions even in the thermodynamic limit. Upon further…
The von Neumann entropy of various quantum dissipative models is calculated in order to discuss the entanglement properties of these systems. First, integrable quantum dissipative models are discussed, i.e., the quantum Brownian motion and…
We review the formalism by which the tunnelling probability of an unstable ground state can be computed in quantum field theory, with special reference to the Standard Model of electroweak interactions. We describe in some detail the…
This paper is devoted to the study of quantum dissipation in cluster decay phenomena in the frame of the Lindblad approach to quantum open systems. The tunneling of a metastable state across a piecewise quadratic potential is envisaged for…
We study the evolution of a system of two qubits, each of which interacts locally with a spin chain with nontrivial internal Hamiltonian. We present an exact solution to this problem and analyze the dependence of decoherence on the distance…
False vacuum decay in quantum mechanical first order phase transitions is a phenomenon with wide implications in cosmology, and presents interesting theoretical challenges. In the standard approach, it is assumed that false vacuum decay…
Motivated by recent discussions of the string-theory landscape, we propose field-theoretic realizations of models with large numbers of vacua. These models contain multiple U(1) gauge groups, and can be interpreted as deconstructed versions…
We study the continuum limit of the motion of agents in the plane driven by competing short-range repulsion and long-range attractive forces. At a critical parameter value, we find destabilization of a trivial branch of uniformly…
We study transitions from convective to absolute instability near a trivial state in large bounded domains for prototypical model problems in the presence of transport and negative nonlinear feedback. We identify two generic scenarios,…
We study the dynamics of states perturbatively expanded about a harmonic system of loop quantum cosmology, exhibiting a bounce. In particular, the evolution equations for the first and second order moments of the system are analyzed. These…
Quantum correlations between two or more different degrees of freedom of the same particle is sometimes referred to as intraparticle entanglement. In this work, we study these intra-particle correlations between two different degrees of…