Related papers: Pseudo-Bounces vs. New Instantons
The bounce solutions of self-interacting scalar fields coupled to gravity are studied using a semi-classical approach. We found that bounce solutions have a maximum required barrier curvature, in addition to the known minimum required…
The spectrum of small perturbations about oscillating bounce solutions recently discussed in the literature is investigated. Our study supports quite intuitive and expected result: the bounce with N nodes has exactly N homogeneous negative…
The tunneling potential formalism, an alternative to the standard Coleman Euclidean approach, offers in a natural way a unified view of vacuum decays. In particular, I show in this talk how Coleman's bounce is just a member of a continuous…
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…
We investigate various types of Fubini instantons in Dilatonic Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theory of gravitation, which describe the decay of the vacuum state at a hilltop potential through the tunneling without a barrier. It is shown that the…
In the decay process of metastable vacua in quantum field theories, the bounce solution, a classical solution in Euclideanized theories, is helpful in calculating the decay rate. Recently, the bounce solution with a conical singularity has…
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…
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…
We study Fubini instantons of a self-gravitating scalar field. The Fubini instanton describes the decay of a vacuum state under tunneling instead of rolling in the presence of a tachyonic potential. The tunneling occurs from the maximum of…
We demonstrate that possession of a single negative mode is not a sufficient criterion for an instanton to mediate exponential decay. For example, de Sitter space is generically stable against decay via the Coleman-De Luccia instanton. This…
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…
It appears difficult to construct a simple model for an open universe based on the one bubble inflationary scenario. The reason is that one needs a large mass to avoid the tunneling via the Hawking Moss solution and a small mass for…
We study the decay rate of a false vacuum in gauge theory at the one-loop level. We pay particular attention to the case where the bounce consists of an arbitrary number of scalar fields. With a multi-field bounce, which has a curved…
The tunneling potential method to calculate the action for vacuum decay is an alternative to the Euclidean bounce method that has a number of attractive features. In this paper we extend the formalism to general spacetime dimension $d>2$…
Using a new approach to the analysis of false vacuum decay based on the so-called tunneling potential, we develop a general method to find scalar potentials with a false vacuum with exactly solvable decay at the semi-classical level,…
The standard bounce formalism for calculating the decay rate of a metastable vacuum cannot be applied to theories in which the symmetry breaking is due to radiative corrections, because in such theories the tree-level action has no bounce…
We identify instantons representing vacuum decay in a 6-dimensional toy model for string theory flux compactifications, with the two extra dimensions compactified on a sphere. We evaluate the instanton action for tunneling between different…
Recently, it was shown that in the absence of gravity there exist non-$O(4)$-symmetric instanton solutions with finite action beyond Coleman's instantons. In this paper, focusing on the false-vacuum decay in a single scalar field in flat…
Decay of a de Sitter vacuum may proceed through a "static" instanton, representing pair creation of critical bubbles separated by a distance comparable to the Hubble radius -- a process somewhat analogous to thermal activation in flat…
We study radiative corrections to the decay rate of false vacua, paying particular attention to the renormalization-scale dependence of the decay rate. The decay rate exponentially depends on the bounce action. The bounce action itself is…