Related papers: Supercooling exit from charge supersaturation
It has been recently realized that within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, for certain patterns of superpartner masses, consistent with all the present experimental constraints, the scalar potential may develop at some scale $Q_0$…
In this paper, we numerically study the impact heavy field degrees of freedom have on vacuum metastability in a toy model, with the aim of better understanding how the decoupling theorem extends to semiclassical processes. We observe that…
Many candidate models for dark energy are based on the existence of a classical scalar field. In the context of Quantum Field Theory (QFT), we briefly discus the condensation of such a field from a light quantum scalar field produced by…
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…
A mechanism for suppressing the cosmological constant is developed, based on an analogy with a superconducting phaseshift in which free fermions coupled perturbatively to a weak gravitational field are in an unstable false vacuum state. The…
Given a scalar field with metastable minima, bubbles nucleate quantum mechanically. When bubbles collide, energy stored in the bubble walls is converted into kinetic energy of the field. This kinetic energy can facilitate the classical…
The effects of the initial temperature in the out of equilibrium quantum field dynamics in the presence of an homogeneous external field are investigated. We consider an initial thermal state of temperature T for a constant external field…
When we lower the temperature of a liquid, at some point we meet a first order phase transition to the crystal. Yet, under certain conditions it is possible to keep the system in its metastable phase and to avoid crystallization. In this…
Current measurements of Standard Model parameters suggest that the electroweak vacuum is metastable. This metastability has important cosmological implications, because large fluctuations in the Higgs field could trigger vacuum decay in the…
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.…
Quantum fields in compact stars can be amplified due to a semiclassical instability. This generic feature of scalar fields coupled to curvature may affect the birth and the equilibrium structure of relativistic stars. We point out that the…
The decay of metastable states is dominated by quantum tunneling at low temperatures and by thermal activation at high temperatures. The escape rate of a particle out of a square well is calculated within a semi-classical approximation and…
The model of vacuum energy compensation due to interaction of a scalar field $\phi$ with curvature scalar of the form $\beta R \phi^2 f(\phi) $ is proposed. It is shown that with a simple power form of $f(\phi)$ the exponential expansion,…
The evolution of a scalar field is explored taking into account the presence of a background fluid in a positively curved Universe in the framework of loop quantum cosmology. Though the mechanism that provides the initial conditions for…
Metastable states decay at zero temperature through quantum tunneling at an exponentially small rate, which depends on the Coleman-de Luccia instanton, also known as bounce. In some theories, the bounce may not exist or its on-shell action…
We investigate the relaxation mechanism of a supercooled tetrahedral liquid at its limit of stability using isothermal isobaric ($NPT$) Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. In similarity with systems which are far from equilibrium but near the…
We present a study of the decay of metastable states of a scalar field via thermal activation, in the presence of a finite density of fermions. The process we consider is the nucleation of ``{\it droplets}'' of true vacuum inside the false…
We discuss the possibility of existence of entanglement in biological systems. Our arguments centre on the fact that biological systems are thermodynamic open driven systems far from equilibrium. In such systems error correction can occur…
When a few tens of charged particles are trapped in a spherical electrostatic potential at low temperature they form concentric shells resembling atoms. These ``artificial atoms'' can be easily controlled by varying the confinement…
We discuss the generic phase diagrams of pure systems that remain fluid near zero temperature. We call this phase a quantum fluid. We argue that the signature of the transition is the change of sign of the chemical potential, being negative…