Related papers: Bubble nucleation at zero and nonzero temperatures
We study first order phase transitions that occur when the temperature of the system increases and we identify the conditions that lead to super-heating, a phase where the system can heat up arbitrarily. First order phase transitions with…
The quantum tunneling process of decay of the composite particle in the de Sitter vacuum looks as thermal radiation with the effective temperature twice larger than the Hawking temperature associated with the cosmological horizon.
Classical thermodynamics is built with the concept of equilibrium states. However, it is less clear how equilibrium thermodynamics emerges through the dynamics that follows the principle of quantum mechanics. In this paper, we develop a…
We introduce a new theoretical approach to dissipative quantum systems. By means of a continuous sequence of infinitesimal unitary transformations, we decouple the small quantum system that one is interested in from its thermodynamically…
In an effective Lagrangian approach to QCD we nonperturbatively calculate an analytic approximation to the decay rate of a false vacuum per unit volume, $\Gamma/V$. We do so for both zero and high temperature theories. This result is…
In the framework of the Polyakov quark-meson model with two flavors, the bubble dynamics of a first-order phase transition in the region of high density and low temperature are investigated by using the homogeneous thermal nucleation…
In quantum theory the vacuum is defined as a state of minimum energy that is devoid of particles but still not completely empty. It is perhaps more surprising that its definition depends on the geometry of the system and on the trajectory…
We study numerically the real-time history of the cosmological electroweak phase transition, as it may take place in the Standard Model or in MSSM for m_H < m_W according to recent lattice results. We follow the nucleated bubbles from the…
Heterogeneous nucleation is central to many familiar first-order phase transitions such as the freezing of water and the solidification of metals, and it can also play a crucial role in cosmology. We examine nucleation seeded by preexisting…
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…
False vacuum states are metastable in quantum field theories, and true vacuum bubbles can be nucleated due to the quantum tunneling effect. It was recently suggested that an evaporating black hole (BH) can be a catalyst of bubble…
Building upon the recent findings regarding inverse phase transitions in the early universe, we present the first natural realisation of this phenomenon within a supersymmetry-breaking sector. We demonstrate that inverse hydrodynamics,…
We discuss how the thermalization of an elementary quantum system is modified when the system is placed in an environment out of thermal equilibrium. To this aim we provide a detailed investigation of the dynamics of an atomic system placed…
Macroscopic theories of nucleation such as classical nucleation theory envision that clusters of the bulk stable phase form inside the bulk metastable phase. Molecular dynamics simulations are often used to elucidate nucleation mechanisms,…
We examine a new multiverse scenario in which the component universes interact. We focus our attention to the process of "true" vacuum nucleation in the false vacuum within one single element of the multiverse. It is shown that the…
The Euclidean action is calculated in the thin-wall approximation for a first-order vacuum phase transition in which the bubble appears symmetrically around either a global monopole or a gauge cosmic string. The bubble is assumed to be much…
We study the process of thermal activation mediated by sphaleron transitions by analyzing the real-time dynamics of the decay out of equilibrium in a $1+1$ dimensional field theory with a metastable state. The situation considered is that…
We study the effects of internal symmetries on the decay by bubble nucleation of a metastable false vacuum. The zero modes about the bounce solution that are associated with the breaking of continuous internal symmetries result in an…
For a rather general class of scenarios, sweeping through a zero-temperature phase transition by means of a time-dependent external parameter entails universal behavior: In the vicinity of the critical point, excitations behave as quantum…
Vacuum energy changes during cosmological phase transitions and becomes relatively important at epochs just before phase transitions. For a viable cosmology the vacuum energy just after a phase transition must be set by the critical…