Related papers: Tunneling Potential Actions from Canonical Transfo…
The quantum decay of a metastable vacuum is exponentially suppressed by a tunneling action that can be calculated in the semi-classical approximation as the Euclidean action of a bounce that interpolates between the false and true phases.…
An alternative approach to the calculation of tunneling actions, that control the exponential suppression of the decay of metastable phases, is presented. The new method circumvents the use of bounces in Euclidean space by introducing an…
The Tunneling Potential Formalism was introduced to calculate the tunneling actions that control vacuum decay as an alternative to the standard Euclidean Formalism. The new approach sets the problem as a simple variational problem in field…
The tunneling potential formalism makes it easy to construct exact solutions to the vacuum decay problem in potentials with multiple fields. While some exact solutions for single-field decays were known, we present the first nontrivial…
We describe a new method which allows one to evaluate the false vacuum decay rate for a general potential which may depend on an arbitrary number of scalar fields.
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 $d>2$…
Canonical semiclassical methods can be used to develop an intuitive definition of tunneling time through potential barriers. An application to atomic ionization is given here, considering both static and time-dependent electric fields. The…
For the theory of a single scalar field $\varphi$ with a quartic potential $V(\varphi)$, we find semi-analytic expressions for the Euclidean action in both four and three dimensions. The action in four dimensions determines the quantum…
The false vacua of some potentials do not decay via Euclidean bounces. This typically happens for tunneling actions with a flat direction (in field configuration space) that is lifted by a perturbation into a sloping valley, pushing the…
We discuss new possible tunneling processes in the presence of gravity. We formulate quantum tunneling using the Wheeler-deWitt canonical quantization and the WKB approximation. The distinctive feature of our formulation is that it…
Recently, the calculation of tunneling actions, that control the exponential suppression of the decay of metastable vacua, has been reformulated as an elementary variational problem in field space. This paper extends this formalism to…
We study the quantum tunnel effect through a potential barrier employing a semiclassical formulation of quantum mechanics based on expectation values of configuration variables and quantum dispersions as dynamical variables. The evolution…
We formulate a procedure to obtain a gauge-invariant tunneling rate at zero temperature using the recently developed tunneling potential approach. This procedure relies on a consistent power counting in gauge coupling and a derivative…
We propose a new approach for computing tunneling rates in quantum or thermal field theory with multiple scalar fields. It is based on exact analytical solutions of piecewise linear potentials with many segments that describes any given…
An Euclidean bounce describing vacuum decay can be considered as an infinite stack of concentric thin shells to which a thin-wall action can be assigned. The integral over all shells produces then a tunneling action that is precisely the…
Canonical variables for the Poisson algebra of quantum moments are introduced here, expressing semiclassical quantum mechanics as a canonical dynamical system that extends the classical phase space. New realizations for up to fourth order…
Tunneling in quantum field theory is worth understanding properly, not least because it controls the long term fate of our universe. There are however, a number of features of tunneling rate calculations which lack a desirable transparency,…
We show that in Euclidean field theories that have bounce solutions, the bounce with the least action is the global minimum of the action in an open space of field configurations. A rigorous upper bound on the minimal bounce action can…
Back reaction of the particle creation on the quantum tunneling process is analyzed in real time formalism. We use quantum potential method in which whole quantum dynamics is exactly projected to a classical Hamilton-Jacobi equation with…
The Euclidean bounce for vacuum decay enjoys an $O(4)$ symmetry that is lost in the presence of impurities than can catalyze the decay. We present a formulation for the calculation of the tunneling decay action, that is explicitly positive…