Related papers: Real-time dynamics of false vacuum decay
We study tunneling between vacua in multi-dimensional field spaces. Working in the strict thin wall approximation, we find that the conventional instantons for false vacuum decay develop a new vanishing eigenvalue in their fluctuation…
We study by numerical simulations the transition from the metastable "false vacuum" to the broken symmetry phase in the preheating stage after cosmic inflation in a scalar hybrid model. We take quantum fluctuations and their back reaction…
We study the possibility of forming the false vacuum bubble nucleated within the true vacuum background via the true-to-false vacuum phase transition in curved spacetime. We consider a semiclassical Euclidean bubble in the Einstein theory…
Open quantum systems with nearly degenerate energy levels have been shown to exhibit long-lived metastable states in the approach to equilibrium, even when modelled with certain Lindblad-form quantum master equations. This is a result of…
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…
Nonperturbative dynamics of quantum fields out of equilibrium is often described by the time evolution of a hierarchy of correlation functions, using approximation methods such as Hartree, large N, and nPI-effective action techniques. These…
Analytic continuation of quantum statistical physics from imaginary to real time is analyzed. Adiabatic vanishing of interactions at real time infinities gives origin to singularities at complex times. This undermines the hypothesis of…
Vacuum decay in de Sitter space is a process of great physical interest, as it allows to rule out cosmological models in the early and current Universe. Its rate may be described in terms of an instanton in Euclidean space called bounce and…
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…
We consider the Skyrme model modified by the addition of mass terms which explicitly break chiral symmetry and pick out a specific point on the model's target space as the unique true vacuum. However, they also allow the possibility of…
A metastable state, or a false vacuum, is not an eigenstate of the Hamiltonian in quantum field theory. Its energy density has a non-zero imaginary part equal to its decay width. Therefore, supersymmetry cannot be exact in the false vacuum.…
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…
This paper aims to gather together some of the basic ideas behind the theory of false vacuum decay in quantum Ising models, focusing on the application of spin chains as analogue systems to false vacuum decay in elementary particle theory.…
The probability of destruction of a metastable vacuum state by the field of a highly virtual particle with energy $E$ is calculated for a (3+1) dimensional theory in the leading WKB approximation in the thin-wall limit. It is found that the…
We present the calculation of the Feynman path integral in real time for tunneling in quantum mechanics and field theory, including the first quantum corrections. For this purpose, we use the well-known fact that Euclidean saddle points in…
We provide a novel, concise and self-contained evaluation of true- and false vacuum decay rates in general relativity. We insist on general covariance and choose observable boundary conditions, which yields the well known false-vacuum decay…
Transition of the ground state of a classical $\Phi^4$ theory in 2+1 dimensions is studied from a metastable state into the stable equilibrium. The transition occurs in the broken $Z_2$ symmetry phase and is triggered by a vanishingly small…
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,…
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…
In this work we characterize the false vacuum decay in the ferromagnetic quantum Ising chain with a weak longitudinal field subject to continuous monitoring of the local magnetization. Initializing the system in a metastable state, the…