Related papers: The tunneling decay rate in QFT beyond the thin wa…
In many systems in condensed matter physics and quantum field theory, first order phase transitions are initiated by the nucleation of bubbles of the stable phase. In homogeneous nucleation theory the nucleation rate $\Gamma$ can be written…
In the standard lore the decay of the false vacuum of a single-field potential is described by a semi-classical Euclidean bounce configuration that can be found using overshoot/undershoot algorithms, and whose action suppresses…
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…
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…
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…
The tunneling rate of fractional charge across a Laughlin state on the cylinder is computed numerically. The decay with strip width Y is fitted to exp[- a (Y/ l)**2/12] where l is the Landau length, and a is approximately 1.0. This rate is…
Quantum vortex tunneling is studied for the case where the Hall and the dissipative dynamics are simultaneously present. For a given temperature, the magnetization relaxation rate is calculated as a function of the external current and the…
The decay rate of a false vacuum is determined by the minimal action solution of the tunnelling field: bounce. In this Letter, we focus on models with scalar fields which have a canonical kinetic term in $N(>2)$ dimensional Euclidean space,…
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…
The dephasing rate of an electron level in a quantum dot, placed next to a fluctuating edge current in the fractional quantum Hall effect, is considered. Using perturbation theory, we first show that this rate has an anomalous dependence on…
I investigate the tunneling decay rate of a polaritonic system formed by a strong coupling between a vacuum cavity mode and $N$ metastable systems. Using a simple model potential, I find the instanton solutions controlling the…
Scalar field theory with an asymmetric potential is studied at zero temperature and high-temperature for $\phi^6$ potential. The equations of motion are solved numerically to obtain O(4) spherical symmetric and O(3) cylindrical symmetric…
We revisit the formalism for tunneling in quantum field theory developed by Coleman and collaborators. In particular using the generalization of WKB methods for tunneling in quantum mechanics we avoid the problems with negative eigenvalues…
We study the decay law for a moving unstable particle. The usual time-dilatation formula states that the decay width for an unstable state moving with a momentum $p$ and mass $M$ is $\tilde{\Gamma}_{p}=\Gamma M/\sqrt{p^{2}+M^{2}}$ with…
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…
An asymptotically exact quantum mechanical calculation of the matrix elements for tunneling through an asymmetric barrier is combined with the two-state statistical model for decay out of superdeformed bands to determine the energy barrier…
The field-theoretical description of quantum fluctuations on the background of a tunneling field $\sigma$ is revisited in the case of a functional Schrodinger approach. We apply this method in the case when quantum fluctuations are coupled…
We derive the rate for transitions between de Sitter vacua by treating the field theory on the static patch as a thermal system. This reproduces the Coleman-De Luccia formalism for calculating the rate, but leads to a modified…
I provide some simple physical arguments that, once gravitation and some subtleties are taken into account, rather broad classes of potentials result in instantons which tunnel relatively rapidly between perturbatively stable minima. In…
We develop semiclassical methods for studying bubble nucleation in models with parameters that vary slowly in time. Introducing a more general rotation of the time contour allows access to a larger set of final states, and typically a…