Related papers: Towards the fate of the oscillating false vacuum
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…
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…
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…
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…
A method to determine the quantum state of a scalar field after $O(4)$-symmetric bubble nucleation has been developed recently. The method has an advantage that it concisely gives us a clear picture of the resultant quantum state. In…
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…
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 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…
We study the quantum tunnel effect through a potential barrier employing a semiclassical formulation of quantum mechanics based on expectation values of configuration variables and quantum dispersions as dynamical variables. The evolution…
It is shown that, to the lowest order in $\hbar,$ the particle production related to the tunneling that leads to the false vacuum decay is described by the orthogonal part of fluctuation field with respect to the bounce solution. As a…
The quantum decay of a metastable vacuum is exponentially suppressed by a tunneling action that can be calculated in the semi-classical approximation as the Euclidean action of a bounce that interpolates between the false and true phases.…
Quasiclassical methods for non-adiabatic quantum dynamics can reveal new features of quantum effects, such as tunneling evolution, that are harder to reveal in standard treatments based on wave functions of stationary states. Here, these…
Given a scalar field with metastable minima, bubbles nucleate quantum mechanically. When bubbles collide, energy stored in the bubble walls is converted into kinetic energy of the field. This kinetic energy can facilitate the classical…
The study of the quantum to classical transition is of fundamental as well as technological importance, and focusses on mesoscopic devices, with a size for which either classical physics or quantum physics can be brought to dominate. A…
We compute tunneling in a quantum field theory in 1+1 dimensions for a field potential $U(\Phi)$ of the asymmetric double well type. The system is localized initially in the ``false vacuum''. We consider the case of a {\em compact space}…
We revisit the formalism for tunneling in quantum field theory developed by Coleman and collaborators. In particular using the generalization of WKB methods for tunneling in quantum mechanics we avoid the problems with negative eigenvalues…
The field-theoretical description of quantum fluctuations on the background of a tunneling field $\sigma$ is revisited in the case of a functional Schrodinger approach. We apply this method in the case when quantum fluctuations are coupled…
Tunneling in quantum field theory is well understood in the case of a single scalar field. However, in theories with spontaneous symmetry breaking, one has to take into account the additional zero modes which appear due to the Goldstone…
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…
We study quantum mechanical tunneling using complex solutions of the classical field equations. Simple visualization techniques allow us to unify and generalize previous treatments, and straightforwardly show the connection to the standard…