Related papers: Vacuum Decay Induced by False Skyrmions
The theory of false vacuum decay in a thermal system may have a cross-over from predominantly thermal transitions to quantum transitions as the temperature is decreased. New numerical methods and results are presented here that can be used…
It is suggested that the true ground state of the world has exactly vanishing vacuum energy and that the cosmological constant that seems to have been observed is due to our region of the universe being stuck in a false vacuum, whose energy…
We present a mechamism why interlayer tunneling conductivity in coherent bilayer quantum Hall states at $\nu=1$ is anomalously large, but finite in the recent experiment. According to the mechanism, pseudoSkyrmions causes the finite…
Within the quantum mechanical treatment of the decay problem one finds that at late times $t$ the survival probability of an unstable state cannot have the form of an exponentially decreasing function of time $t$ but it has an inverse…
We use analytic estimates and numerical simulations to explore the stochastic approach to vacuum decay. According to this approach, the time derivative of a scalar field, which is in a local vacuum state, develops a large fluctuation and…
Phantom scalar theories are widely considered in cosmology, but rarely at the quantum level, where they give rise to negative-energy ghost particles. These cause decay of the vacuum into gravitons and photons, violating observational…
We discuss the vacuum energy density term resulting from the spontaneous breakdown of the electroweak gauge symmetry, in the Higgs Mechanism. We alternatively expand the scalar field at one of the degenerate states that lie outside the…
We explore the real solutions to the Spherical Collapse Model in a non-flat Universe with a Cosmological Constant, and observe a possible situation for a fake or Ghost Collapse, in which an expanding overdense spherical region, turns around…
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…
There is a single negative mode in the spectrum of small perturbations about the tunneling solutions describing a metastable vacuum decay in flat spacetime. This mode is needed for consistent description of decay processes. When gravity is…
Under the hypothesis that the cosmological constant vanishes in the true ground state with lowest possible energy density, we argue that the observed small but finite vacuum-like energy density can be explained if we consider a theory with…
We derive the decay rate of an unstable phase of a quantum field theory in the presence of an impurity in the thin-wall approximation. This derivation is based on the how the impurity changes the (flat spacetime) geometry relative to case…
A metastable state, or a false vacuum, is not an eigenstate of the Hamiltonian in quantum field theory. Its energy density has a non-zero imaginary part equal to its decay width. Therefore, supersymmetry cannot be exact in the false vacuum.…
In quantum field theory (QFT), the "vacuum" is not just empty space but the lowest-energy state of a quantum field. If the energy landscape has multiple local minima, the local ground states are the false vacuum (FV) which can tunnel…
We take a phenomenological approach to study the cosmological evolution of decaying vacuum cosmology ($\Lambda(t)$CDM) based on a simple assumption about the form of the modified matter expansion rate. In this framework, almost all the…
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…
The metastable dark energy scenario is revisited by assuming that the current false vacuum energy density is the remnant from a primeval inflationary stage. The zero temperature scalar field potential is here described by an even power…
We investigate a novel interplay between the decay and annihilation of a particle whose mass undergoes a large shift during a first order phase transition, leading to the particles becoming trapped in the false vacuum and enhancing their…
We provide a novel, concise and self-contained evaluation of true- and false vacuum decay rates in general relativity. We insist on general covariance and choose observable boundary conditions, which yields the well known false-vacuum decay…
The vacuum decay in a de Sitter universe is studied within semiclassical approximation for the class of effective inflaton potentials whose curvature at the top is close to a critical value. By comparing the actions of the Hawking - Moss…