Related papers: False vacuum decay: an introductory review
We extend the study of the effect of static primordial black holes on vacuum decay. In particular, we compare the tunneling rates between vacua of different values of the cosmological constant and black hole mass by pointing out the…
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…
We study the tunneling between two quantum Hall systems, along a quasi one-dimensional interface. A detailed analysis relates microscopic parameters, characterizing the potential barrier, with the effective field theory model for the…
The time dependent density matrix of a system with potential barrier is studied using path integrals. The characterization of the initial state, which is assumed to be restricted to one side of the barrier, and the time evolution of the…
We investigate the quantum cosmological tunneling scenario for inflationary models. Within a path-integral approach, we derive the corresponding tunneling probability distribution. A sharp peak in this distribution can be interpreted as the…
In the standard lore the decay of the false vacuum of a single-field potential is described by a semi-classical Euclidean bounce configuration that can be found using overshoot/undershoot algorithms, and whose action suppresses…
We study the transition probability and coherence of a two-site system, interacting with an oscillator. Both properties depend on the initial preparation. The oscillator is prepared in a thermal state and, even though it cannot be…
The quantum tunnelling and nucleation theory of vortices in helium II is reviewed. Arguments are given that the only reliable method to calculate tunnelling probabilities in this highly correlated, strongly interacting many-body system is…
In a renormalizable theory the survival probability of an unstable quantum state features divergences as a consequence of the rapid growth of the density of states with energy. Introducing a high energy cutoff $\Lambda$, the transient…
The phenomenon of quantum tunneling remains a fascinating and enigmatic one, defying classical notions of particle behavior. This paper presents a novel theoretical investigation of the tunneling phenomenon, from the viewpoint of Hartman…
We revisit the famous Coleman-de Luccia formalism for decay of false vacuum in gravitational theory. Since the corresponding wave function is time-independent we argue that its instanton's interpretation as the decay rate probability is…
In this work, we expand upon our previous study, the effect of surface vibrations (low-lying vibrational states) on the calculation of penetration probability in alpha decay of spherical isotopes [Phys.Rev.C91,034611(2015)]. To this aim,…
Though theoretical treatments of quantum tunnelling within single-particle quantum mechanics are well-established, at present, there is no quantum field-theoretic description (QFT) of tunnelling. Due to the single-particle nature of quantum…
Motivated by our earlier argument that the apparent large cosmological constant from quantum fluctuations is actually an artifact of not using a full quantum mechanical superposition to determine the ground state in which the universe lives…
We study a gauge theory model where there is an intermediate symmetry breaking to a meta- stable vacuum that breaks a simple gauge group to a U (1) factor. Such models admit the existence of meta-stable magnetic monopoles, which we dub…
The quantum decay of a relativistic scalar field from a metastable state ("false vacuum decay") is a fundamental idea in quantum field theory and cosmology. This occurs via local formation of bubbles of true vacuum with their subsequent…
The 'thin-wall approximation' gives a simple estimate of the decay rate of an unstable quantum field. Unfortunately, the approximation is uncontrolled. In this paper I show that there are actually two different thin-wall approximations and…
We study the decay of the cosmological constant in two spacetime dimensions through production of pairs. We show that the same nucleation process looks as quantum mechanical tunneling (instanton) to one Killing observer and as thermal…
The most unstable quantum states and elementary particles possess more than a single decay channel. At the same time, it is well known that typically the decay law is not simply exponential. Therefore, it is natural to ask how to spot the…
Several basic problems of the theory of quantum phase transitions are reviewed. The effect of the quantum correlations on the phase transition properties is considered with the help of basic models of statistical physics. The effect of…