Related papers: Vacuum decay and internal symmetries
We introduce a new picture of vacuum decay which, in contrast to existing semiclassical techniques, provides a real-time description and does not rely on classically-forbidden tunneling paths. Using lattice simulations, we observe vacuum…
The theory of false vacuum decay in a thermal system may have a cross-over from predominantly thermal transitions to quantum transitions as the temperature is decreased. New numerical methods and results are presented here that can be used…
In field theories where a metastable false vacuum state arises as a result of radiative corrections, the calculation of the rate of false vacuum decay by bubble nucleation depends on the effective potential and the other functions that…
Theories with compact extra dimensions are sometimes unstable to decay into a bubble of nothing -- an instability resulting in the destruction of spacetime. We investigate the existence of these bubbles in theories where the moduli fields…
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…
We study the false vacuum decay and bubble nucleation in the presence of a cosmic string in dS spacetime. A cosmic string induces a deficit angle in spacetime around itself so the nucleated bubble has the shape of a rugby ball. Working in…
We investigate the negative modes about Coleman-De Luccia bounces governing vacuum transitions in de Sitter space, with the goal of gaining physical insight into the various anomalous results associated with these that have been reported in…
If a theory has more than one classically stable vacuum, quantum tunneling and thermal jumps make the transition between the vacua possible. The transition happens through a first order phase transition started by nucleation of a bubble of…
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…
We study zero-temperature false vacuum decay in $D$ compact spatial dimensions and show that for volumes below a critical value a new bounce solution, different from Coleman's celebrated $O(D)$ bubble, mediates the decay process, and…
We study the decay rate of a false vacuum in gauge theory at the one-loop level. We pay particular attention to the case where the bounce consists of an arbitrary number of scalar fields. With a multi-field bounce, which has a curved…
We investigate vacuum decays in the early Universe in the presence of curvature perturbations. For sufficiently large perturbations associated with over-densities, we find that the bounce solution develops an oscillating middle stage near…
There is a single negative mode in the spectrum of small perturbations about the tunneling solutions describing a metastable vacuum decay in flat spacetime. This mode is needed for consistent description of decay processes. When gravity is…
The decay of metastable 'false vacuum' states via bubble nucleation plays a crucial role in many cosmological scenarios. Cold-atom analog experiments will soon provide the first empirical probes of this process, with potentially…
We extend the study of the effect of static primordial black holes on vacuum decay. In particular, we compare the tunneling rates between vacua of different values of the cosmological constant and black hole mass by pointing out the…
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…
We present a fast and efficient method for studying vacuum stability constraints in multi-scalar theories beyond the Standard Model. This method is designed for a reliable use in large scale parameter scans. The minimization of the scalar…
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…
The Euclidean bounce for vacuum decay enjoys an $O(4)$ symmetry that is lost in the presence of impurities than can catalyze the decay. We present a formulation for the calculation of the tunneling decay action, that is explicitly positive…
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…