Related papers: Instability of bubble expansion at zero temperatur…
We investigate the recent suggestion that a Minkowski vacuum is either absolutely stable, or it has a divergent decay rate and thus fails to have a locally Minkowski description. The divergence comes from boost integration over momenta of…
Metastable `false' vacuum states are an important feature of the Standard Model of particle physics and many theories beyond it. Describing the dynamics of a phase transition out of a false vacuum via the nucleation of bubbles is essential…
The dynamics of false vacuum decay at the end of inflation is studied. It is shown that the creation of a new phase is mainly stimulated by temperature fluctuations. Moving walls of O(3)-symmetric bubbles weakly interact with their…
We numerically study the evolution of a classical real scalar field in ${(1+1)}$ dimensions with initial conditions describing thermal fluctuations around a metastable vacuum. We track false vacuum decay in real time and compare several…
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…
We investigate the role of nonperturbative, bubble-like inhomogeneities on the decay rate of false-vacuum states in two and three-dimensional scalar field theories. The inhomogeneities are induced by setting up large-amplitude oscillations…
We study the evolution of growing vacuum bubbles. The bubble walls interact with the surrounding fluid and may, consequently, reach a terminal velocity. If the mean free path of the particles in the fluid is much shorter than the bubble…
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…
False-vacuum decay between two morphologically distinct supersolid phases via bubble nucleation is studied in a uniform dipolar gas confined to the plane. Starting from a metastable honeycomb state, the formation of stripe phase domains is…
We study the dynamics of cosmological phase transitions in the case of small velocities of bubble walls, $v_w<0.1$. We discuss the conditions in which this scenario arises in a physical model, and we compute the development of the phase…
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 point out that the (pseudo-)conformal Universe scenario may be realized as decay of conformally invariant, metastable vacuum, which proceeds via spontaneous nucleation and subsequent growth of a bubble of a putative new phase. We study…
The existence of Davies-Unruh temperature in a uniformly accelerated frame shows that quantum fluctuations of the inertial vacuum state appears as thermal fluctuations in the accelerated frame. Hence thermodynamic experiments cannot…
We analyze the properties of naturally formed nano-bubbles in Lennard-Jones molecular dynamics simulations of liquid-to-vapor nucleation in the boiling and the cavitation regimes. The large computational volumes provide a realistic…
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…
Real scalar field models incorporating asymmetric double well potentials will decay to the state of lowest energy. While the eventual nature of the system can be discerned, the determination of the dynamics of the bubble wall provides many…
We study the decay of a thermally excited metastable vacuum in classical field theory using real-time numerical simulations. We find a significantly lower decay rate than predicted by standard thermal theory at moderate temperatures,…
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…
The nucleation and evolution of bubbles are investigated in the model of an $O(3)$-symmetric scalar field coupled to gravity in the high temperature limit. It is shown that, in addition to the well-known bubble of which the inside region is…
Theories with compact extra dimensions are sometimes unstable to decay into a bubble of nothing -- an instability resulting in the destruction of spacetime. We investigate the existence of these bubbles in theories where the moduli fields…