Related papers: Tools for Tunneling
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…
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.…
It has been known that the catalytic effect makes the life-time of a metastable state shorter. We discuss this phenomenon in a decay process of a metastable vacuum in the brane-limit of type IIB string theory. Due to the non-linear effect…
We investigate the role of nonperturbative, bubble-like inhomogeneities on the decay rate of false-vacuum states in two and three-dimensional scalar field theories. The inhomogeneities are induced by setting up large-amplitude oscillations…
The false vacuum is a metastable state that can occur in quantum field theory, and its decay was first studied semi-classically by Coleman. In this work we consider the 1+1 dimensional $\varphi^4$ theory, which is the simplest model that…
We study the impact of the ambient fluid on the evolution of collapsing false vacuum bubbles by simulating the dynamics of a coupled bubble-particle system. A significant increase in the mass of the particles across the bubble wall leads to…
The dynamics of false vacuum decay at the end of inflation is studied. It is shown that the creation of a new phase is mainly stimulated by temperature fluctuations. Moving walls of O(3)-symmetric bubbles weakly interact with their…
The rate and manner of vacuum decay are calculated in an explicit flux compactification, including all thick-wall and gravitational effects. For landscapes built of many units of a single flux, the fastest decay is usually to discharge just…
A procedure is reported for numerical analysis of false vacuum transition in a model with multiple scalar fields. It is a refined version of the approach by Konstandin and Huber. The alteration makes it possible to tackle a class of…
Although the Higgs potential in the Standard Model (SM) contains only a simple electroweak symmetry breaking vacuum in the small field region, additional metastable or global vacua could exist in models beyond the SM. In this paper, we…
The influence of the shape of scalar field potential on the outcome of vacuum decay in de Sitter universe is studied. Sufficient condition for vacuum decay via bubble formation, described by Coleman - de Luccia instanton, is revisited and…
Based on the current experimental data, the Standard Model predicts that the current vacuum state of the Universe is metastable, leading to a non-zero rate of vacuum decay through nucleation of bubbles of true vacuum. Our existence implies…
The observed cosmological constant may originate as the minimum value $U_{min}$ of a scalar field potential, where the scalar field is frozen due to a large mass. If this vacuum is metastable, it may decay to a true vacuum either at present…
The fundamental problem of how tunneling in thermal medium is completed is addressed, and a new time scale of order 1/friction for its termination, which is usually much shorter than the Hubble time, is pointed out. Enhanced non-linear…
We present an evaluation of the 1-loop prefactor in the lifetime of a metastable state which decays at finite temperature by bubble nucleation. Such a state is considered in one-component phi^4 model in three space dimensions. The…
The false vacuum decay in field theory from a coherently oscillating initial state is studied for $\phi^6$ potential. An oscillating bubble solution is obtained. The instantaneous bubble nucleation rate is calculated.
We investigate the transport of electrons through a double-barrier resonant-tunneling structure in the regime where the current-voltage characteristics exhibit bistability. In this regime one of the states is metastable, and the system…
We argue that a generic instability afflicts vacua that arise in theories whose moduli space has large dimension. Specifically, by studying theories with multiple scalar fields we provide numerical evidence that for a generic local minimum…
Using a new approach to the analysis of false vacuum decay based on the so-called tunneling potential, we develop a general method to find scalar potentials with a false vacuum with exactly solvable decay at the semi-classical level,…
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,…