Related papers: False Vacuum Decay Rate From Thin To Thick Walls
This paper studies the decay of a large, closed domain wall in a closed universe. Such walls can form in the presence of a broken, discrete symmetry. We introduce a novel process of quantum decay for such a wall, in which the vacuum…
Thermalisation of configurations with initial white noise power spectrum is studied in numerical simulations of a classical one-component $\Phi^4$ theory in 2+1 dimensions, coupled to a small amplitude homogenous external field. The study…
Some false vacua do not decay via bounces. This usually happens when a flat direction of the tunneling action due to scale invariance is lifted to a sloping valley by a scale breaking perturbation, pushing the bounce off to infinity. We…
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.…
We study numerically the existence in a false vacuum, of magnetic monopoles which are ``thin-walled'', \ie, which correspond to a spherical region of radius $R$ that is essentially trivial surrounded by a wall of thickness $\Delta\ll R$,…
The valley structure associated with quantum meta-stability is examined. It is defined by the new valley equation, which enables consistent evaluation of the imaginary-time path-integral. We study the structure of this new valley equation…
We study a gauge theory model where there is an intermediate symmetry breaking to a meta- stable vacuum that breaks a simple gauge group to a U (1) factor. Such models admit the existence of meta-stable magnetic monopoles, which we dub…
The decay of a passive scalar in a three-dimensional chaotic flow is studied using high-resolution numerical simulations. The (volume-preserving) flow considered is a three-dimensional extension of the randomised alternating sine flow…
Quantum decay of a relativistic scalar field from a false vacuum is a fundamental idea in quantum field theory. It is relevant to models of the early Universe, where the nucleation of bubbles gives rise to an inflationary universe and the…
The decay rate of a metastable vacuum is usually calculated using a semiclassical approximation to the Euclidean path integral. The extension to a complete Euclidean lattice Monte Carlo computation, however, is hampered by analytic…
The proposal of a rapid sign-switching cosmological constant in the late universe, mirroring a transition from anti-de Sitter (AdS) to de Sitter (dS) space, has significantly improved the fit to observational data and provides a compelling…
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…
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 possibility of a landscape of metastable vacua raises the question of what fraction of vacua are truly long lived. Naively any would-be vacuum state has many nearby decay paths, and all possible decays must be suppressed. An interesting…
The necessary and sufficient condition for the false vacuum decay in a de Sitter universe via Coleman - de Luccia instanton is applied on the scalar field with quasi - exponential potential.
We recently investigated the nature of resonant tunnelling in standard scalar Quantum Field Theory, uncovering the conditions required for resonance. It was shown that whereas the homogeneous false vacuum may decay via bubble nucleation, it…
We demonstrate that at long times the rate of passive scalar decay in a turbulent, or simply chaotic, flow is dominated by regions (in real space or in inverse space) where mixing is less efficient. We examine two situations. The first is…
We review the description of tunnelling phenomena in the semi-classical approximation in ordinary quantum mechanics and in quantum field theory. In particular, we describe in detail the calculation, up to the first quantum corrections, of…
We consider the model of a false vacuum bubble with a thin wall where the surface energy density is composed of two different components, "domain-wall" type and "dust" type, with opposite signs. We find stably oscillating solutions, which…
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…