Related papers: Occurrence of semiclassical vacuum decay
The existence of instantonic decay modes would indicate a semi-classical instability of the vacua of ten and eleven dimensional supergravity theories. Decay modes whose spin structures are incompatible with those of supersymmetric vacua…
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…
A procedure is reported for numerical analysis of false vacuum transition in a model with multiple scalar fields. It is a refined version of the approach by Konstandin and Huber. The alteration makes it possible to tackle a class of…
We compute bounce solutions describing false vacuum decay in a Phi**4 model in four dimensions with quantum back-reaction. The back-reaction of the quantum fluctuations on the bounce profiles is computed in the one-loop and Hartree…
False vacuum decay, a quantum mechanical first-order phase transition in scalar field theories, is an important phenomenon in early universe cosmology. Recently, real-time semi-classical techniques based on ensembles of lattice simulations…
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 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…
We clarify under what conditions slow-roll inflation can continue almost undisturbed, while briefly evolving through a (semi-classically) metastable false vacuum. Furthermore, we look at potential signatures in the primordial power spectrum…
We give a vacuum description with zero-point density for virtual fluctuations. One of the goals is to explain the origin of the vacuum permittivity and permeability and to calculate their values. In particular, we improve on existing…
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 propose a mechanism for the enhancement of vacuum fluctuations by means of a classical field. The basic idea is that if an observable quantity depends quadratically upon a quantum field, such as the electric field, then the application…
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…
The fundamental vacuum state of quantum fields, related to Minkowski space, produces divergent fluctuations that must be suppressed in order to bring reality to the description of physical systems. As a consequence, negative vacuum…
We suggest a technique that explicitly accounts for the structure of an initial state of quantum field in the semiclassical calculations of path integral in curved space-time, and consider decay of metastable state (conformal vacuum of…
Quantum vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field in empty space seem not to produce observable effects over the motion of a charged test particle. However, when a change in the background vacuum state is implemented, as for instance…
Non-equilibrium phase transitions of a scalar field in an expanding spacetime are discussed. These transitions are shown to lead, for appropriate potential energy functions, to a biased choice of vacuum structure which can be analytically…
A localized charged particle oscillating near a reflecting boundary is considered as a model for non-cancellation of vacuum fluctuations. Although the mean velocity of the particle is sinusoidal, the velocity variance produced by vacuum…
The quantum ratchet current is studied in the parameter space of the dissipative kicked rotor model coupled to a zero temperature quantum environment. We show that vacuum fluctuations blur the generic isoperiodic stable structures found in…
It has been widely believed that, except in very extreme situations, the influence of gravity on quantum fields should amount to just small, sub-dominant contributions. This view seemed to be endorsed by the seminal results obtained over…
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…