Related papers: Real Time Analysis of Thermal Activation via Sphal…
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…
The transition of sphaleron processes from non-equilibrium to thermal equilibrium in the early Universe is examined in detail. The relations between the damping rates and frequencies of the weak and QCD sphaleron degeneracy parameters are…
Temperature plays a crucial role in metastable phenomena, not only by contributing to determine the state (phase) of a system, but also ruling the decay probability to more stable states. Such a situation is encountered in many different…
The time evolution of the thermally activated decay rates is considered. This evolution is of particular importance for the recent nanoscale experiments discussed in the literature, where the potential barrier is relatively low (or the…
We calculate the decay rate for a state prepared in a thermal density matrix centered on a metastable ground state. We find a rate that is intrinsically time {\it dependent}, as opposed to the {\it constant} rates of previous works. The…
The decay rate of metastable states is determined at high temperatures by thermal activation, whereas at temperatures close to zero quantum tunneling is relevant. At some temperature $T_{c}$ the transition from classical to…
We numerically study the evolution of a classical real scalar field in ${(1+1)}$ dimensions with initial conditions describing thermal fluctuations around a metastable vacuum. We track false vacuum decay in real time and compare several…
We study the decay of a thermally excited metastable vacuum in classical field theory using real-time numerical simulations. We find a significantly lower decay rate than predicted by standard thermal theory at moderate temperatures,…
Thermal activation and macroscopic quantum tunneling in current-biased discrete Josephson transmission lines are studied theoretically. The degrees of freedom under consideration are the phases across the junctions which are coupled to each…
We compute the decay rate of a metastable cosmic string in contact with a thermal bath by finding the instanton solution. The new feature is that this decay rate is found in the context of non thermal scalar fields in contact with a thermal…
The decay rate for a particle in a metastable cubic potential is investigated in the quantum regime by the Euclidean path integral method in semiclassical approximation. The imaginary time formalism allows one to monitor the system as a…
We study analytically and numerically the decay of a metastable phase in (2+1)-dimensional classical scalar field theory coupled to a heat bath, which is equivalent to two-dimensional Euclidean quantum field theory at zero temperature. By a…
In quantum field theory, the decay of an extended metastable state into the real ground state is known as ``false vacuum decay'' and it takes place via the nucleation of spatially localized bubbles. Despite the large theoretical effort to…
Metastable `false' vacuum states are an important feature of the Standard Model of particle physics and many theories beyond it. Describing the dynamics of a phase transition out of a false vacuum via the nucleation of bubbles is essential…
The transition from the quantum to the classical regime of the nucleation of the closed Robertson-Walker Universe with spacially homogeneous matter fields is investigated with a perturbation expansion around the sphaleron configuration. A…
In the framework of open quantum systems, we study the internal dynamics of both freely falling and static two-level atoms interacting with quantized conformally coupled massless scalar field in de Sitter spacetime. We find that the atomic…
We develop a new method to determine thermal activation rates, such as for bubble nucleation, topology change, \textsl{etc.}, using 4-dimensional Euclidean methods. This allows nonperturbative study on the lattice. We then investigate the…
The premelting of ice is well known, but little is known about how the premelted and solid surfaces convert to each other. In this work, the transition dynamics between two phases are revealed with large-scale molecular dynamics…
Metastable states of quantum many-body systems with confinement offer a means to simulate false vacuum phenomenology, including non-equilibrium dynamical processes like decay by nucleation, in truncated limits. Recent work has examined the…
We investigate false vacuum decay of a relativistic scalar field initialized in the metastable minimum of an asymmetric double-well potential. The transition to the true ground state is a well-defined initial-value problem in real time,…