Related papers: Tunneling Potential Actions from Canonical Transfo…
A semiclassical method of complex trajectories for the calculation of the tunneling exponent in systems with many degrees of freedom is further developed. It is supplemented with an easily implementable technique, which enables one to…
A canonical formulation of effective equations describes quantum corrections by the back-reaction of moments on the dynamics of expectation values of a state. As a first step toward an extension to quantum-field theory, these methods are…
We present a formalism for which a dissipative system is given by a variational principle. The formalism applies to dynamical systems where its trajectory is monotonic. Subsequently, we derive its Lagrangian and Hamiltonian. From the…
A tunneling bounce driving the decay of a metastable vacuum must respect an integral constraint dictated by simple scaling arguments that is very useful to determine key properties of the bounce. After illustrating how this works in a…
We study tunneling in one-dimensional quantum mechanics using the path integral in real time, where solutions of the classical equation of motion live in the complex plane. Analyzing solutions with small (complex) energy, relevant for…
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…
Motivated by cosmological examples we study quantum field theoretical tunnelling from an initial state where the "classical field", i.e. the vacuum expectation value of the field operator is spatially homogeneous but performing a…
The traditional method of teaching canonical transformations involves the introduction of generating functions of various types. This method obscures the underlying structure of the Hamiltonian least-action principle, and can make a…
We adapt the semiclassical technique, as used in the context of instanton transitions in quantum field theory, to the description of tunneling transmissions at finite energies through potential barriers by complex quantum mechanical…
The classical equation of motion of a charged point particle, including its radiation reaction, is described by the Lorentz-Dirac equation. We found a new class of solutions that describe tunneling (in a completely classical context!). For…
We study quantum mechanical tunneling using complex solutions of the classical field equations. Simple visualization techniques allow us to unify and generalize previous treatments, and straightforwardly show the connection to the standard…
Process of quantum tunneling of particles in various physical systems can be effectively controlled even by a weak and slow varying in time electromagnetic signal if to adapt specially its shape to a particular system. During an…
Tunneling is a fascinating aspect of quantum mechanics that renders the local minima of a potential meta-stable, with important consequences for particle physics, for the early hot stage of the universe, and more speculatively, for the…
Quantum mechanics makes the otherwise stable vacua of a theory metastable through the nucleation of bubbles of the new vacuum. This in turn causes a first order phase transition. These cosmological phase transitions may have played an…
Quantum tunneling is considered from the point of view of local realism. It is concluded that a quantum object tunneling through a potential barrier cannot be interpreted as a point-like particle because such an interpretation generates a…
The tunneling decay rate per unit volume in Quantum Field Theory (QFT), at order $\hbar$, is given by $\Gamma/V = Ae^{-B}$, where $B$ is the Euclidean action evaluated at the so-called bounce, and $A$ is proportional to the determinant of a…
It is shown that tunneling rates can be defined in terms of a false-vacuum effective action whose reality and convexity properties differ from those of the corresponding groundstate functional. The tunneling rate is directly related to the…
A detailed canonical treatment of a new action for a nonrelativistic particle coupled to background gravity, recently given by us, is performed both in the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations. The equation of motion is shown to satisfy…
Time evolution of tunneling phenomena in medium is studied using a standard model of environment interaction. A semiclassical formula valid at low, but finite temperatures is derived in the form of integral transform for the reduced Wigner…
We use path-integrals to derive a general expression for the semiclassical approximation to the partition function of a one-dimensional quantum-mechanical system. Our expression depends solely on ordinary integrals which involve the…