Related papers: Effective potential in non-perturbative gauge theo…
If the potential of a scalar field, Phi, which currently provides the ``dark energy'' of the universe, has a negative minimum -M_0^4, then quantum-mechanical fluctuations could nucleate a bubble of Phi at a negative value of the potential.…
Investigation of the structure of the Standard Model effective potential at very large field strengths opens a window towards new phenomena and can reveal properties of the UV completion of the SM. The map of the lifetimes of the vacua of…
Under the assumption that the cosmological constant vanishes in the true ground state with lowest possible energy density, we argue that the observed small but finite vacuum-like energy density can be explained if we consider a theory with…
The false vacuum decay has been a central theme in physics for half a century with applications to cosmology and to the theory of fundamental interactions. This fascinating phenomenon is even more intriguing when combined with the…
The effective field theory of cosmological perturbations stems from considering a cosmological background solution as a state displaying spontaneous breaking of time translations and (adiabatic) perturbations as the related Nambu-Goldstone…
We study false vacuum decay for a gauged complex scalar field in a polynomial potential with nearly degenerate minima. Radiative corrections to the profile of the nucleated bubble as well as the full decay rate are computed in the planar…
"Physical theories of fundamental significance tend to be gauge theories. These are theories in which the physical system being dealt with is described by more variables than there are physically independent degree of freedom. The…
We study late-time acceleration scenarios using a quintessence field initially trapped in a metastable false vacuum state. The false vacuum has non-zero vacuum energy and could drive exponential expansion if not coupled with gravity. Upon…
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,…
We investigate false vacuum decay of a relativistic scalar field initialized in the metastable minimum of an asymmetric double-well potential. The transition to the true ground state is a well-defined initial-value problem in real time,…
Phantom scalar theories are widely considered in cosmology, but rarely at the quantum level, where they give rise to negative-energy ghost particles. These cause decay of the vacuum into gravitons and photons, violating observational…
It is known that the cosmological constant can be dynamically tuned to an arbitrary small value in classes of scalar tensor theories. The trouble with such schemes is that effective gravity itself vanishes. We explore the possibility of…
Based on a thoeretical model in which scalar fields play crucial roles, we propose a mechanism to better understand a cosmological constant expected to be small (nearly comparable with the critical density) but nonzero as suggested strongly…
We consider a universe with a positive effective cosmological constant and a nonminimally coupled scalar field. When the coupling constant is negative, the scalar field exhibits linear growth at asymptotically late times, resulting in a…
Realizations of scale invariance are studied in the context of a gravitational theory where the action (in the first order formalism) is of the form $S = \int L_{1} \Phi d^{4}x$ + $\int L_{2}\sqrt{-g}d^{4}x$ where $\Phi$ is a density built…
We consider the relationship between the higher symmetry and the dynamical decomposition in supersymmetric gauge theory in various dimensions by studying the semi-classical potential energy. We observe that besides the scalar moduli we…
We consider a theory in which a real scalar field is Yukawa-coupled to a fermion and has a potential with two non-degenerate vacua. If the coupling is sufficiently strong, a collection of N fermions deforms the true vacuum state, creating…
Considering the conformal scaling gauge symmetry as a fundamental symmetry of nature in the presence of gravity, a scalar field is required and used to describe the scale behavior of universe. In order for the scalar field to be a physical…
The one-loop effective potential for gauge models in static de Sitter space at finite temperatures is computed by means of the $\zeta$--function method. We found a simple relation which links the effective potentials of gauge and scalar…
A new approach to vacuum decay in quantum field theory, based on a simple variational formulation in field space using a tunneling potential, is ideally suited to study the effects of gravity on such decays. The method allows to prove in…