Related papers: Metastability in Two Dimensions and the Effective …
The assisted tunneling of a metastable state between barriers is investigated analytically by means of a simplified one dimensional model. A time dependent perturbation changes the pole spectrum of the wave function introducing a larger…
False vacuum decay, a quantum mechanical first-order phase transition in scalar field theories, is an important phenomenon in early universe cosmology. Recently, real-time semi-classical techniques based on ensembles of lattice simulations…
We compute the effective potential for the phase of the Wilson line at high temperature in the standard model to one loop order. Besides the trivial vacua, there are metastable states in the direction of $U(1)$ hypercharge. Assuming that…
The thermal decay of linear chains from a metastable state is investigated. A crossover from rigid to elastic decay occurs when the number of particles, the single particle energy barrier or the coupling strength between the particles is…
The relaxation of a quantum field from a metastable state (false vacuum) to a stable one (true vacuum), also known as false vacuum decay, is a fundamental problem in quantum field theory and cosmology. We study this phenomenon using a…
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…
Condsidering a massive self-interacting phi ^6 scalar field coupled arbitrarily to a (2+1) dimensional Bianchi type-I spacetime, we evaluate the one-loop effective potential. It is found that phi ^6 potential can be regularized in (2+1)…
Effective theories of quantum liquids (superconductors and superfluids of various types) are derived starting from microscopic models at the absolute zero of temperature. Special care is taken to assure Galilei invariance. The effective…
We consider the problem of metastability for a stochastic dynamics with a parallel updating rule with single spin rates equal to those of the heat bath for the Ising nearest neighbors interaction. We study the exit from the metastable…
We study a class of oscillating bounce solutions to the Euclidean field equations for gravity coupled to a scalar field theory with two, possibly degenerate, vacua. In these solutions the scalar field crosses the top of the potential…
We study the compatibility of spontaneous breaking of parity and successful cosmology in a left-right symmetric model where supersymmetry breaking is achieved in metastable vacua. We show that domain walls formed due to this breaking can be…
We discuss here phase transitions in quantum field theory in the context of vacuum realignment through an explicit construction. Vacuum destabilisation may occur through a scalar attaining a nonzero expectation value, or through a…
An upper limit to distillable entanglement between two disconnected regions of massless non-interacting scalar field theory has an exponential decay defined by a geometric decay constant. When regulated at short distances with a spatial…
False vacuum decay, which is understood to happen through bubble nucleation, is a prominent phenomenon relevant to elementary particle physics and early-universe cosmology. Understanding its microscopic dynamics in higher spatial dimensions…
Nucleation is an out-of-equilibrium process, which can be strongly affected by the presence of external fields. In this letter, we report a simple extension of classical nucleation theory to systems submitted to an homogeneous shear flow.…
We point out that the (pseudo-)conformal Universe scenario may be realized as decay of conformally invariant, metastable vacuum, which proceeds via spontaneous nucleation and subsequent growth of a bubble of a putative new phase. We study…
The stochastic effective theory approach, often called stochastic inflation, is widely used in cosmology to describe scalar field dynamics during inflation. The existing formulations are, however, more qualitative than quantitative because…
The essential features of the high-temperature electroweak phase transition are contained in a three-dimensional super-renormalizable effective field theory. We calculate the exact counterterms needed for lattice simulations of the…
In a series of three projects a new technique which allows for higher-loop renormalisation on a manifold with boundary has been developed and used in order to assess the effects of the boundary on the dynamical behaviour of the theory.…
Systems that feature a scalar field $\phi$ with a quasi scale invariant potential, metastable at $\phi=0$, can remain trapped, during cosmic evolution, in the `wrong' vacuum because the process of bubble nucleation to the true vacuum is…