Related papers: Vacuum Tunneling by Cosmic Strings
Quasiclassical methods are used to define dynamical tunneling times in models of quantum cosmological bounces. These methods provide relevant new information compared with the traditional treatment of quantum tunneling by means of tunneling…
False vacuum decay typically proceeds via the nucleation of spherical bubbles of true vacuum, described by $O(4)$ symmetric field configurations in Euclidean time. In this work, we investigate how the presence of cosmic strings can catalyze…
We show that a cosmic string associated with spontaneous $U(1)_R$ symmetry breaking gives a constraint for supersymmetric model building. In some models, the string can be viewed as a tube-like domain wall with a winding number…
We consider the decay of "false kinks," that is, kinks formed in a scalar field theory with a pair of degenerate symmetry-breaking false vacua in 1+1 dimensions. The true vacuum is symmetric. A second scalar field and a peculiar potential…
We describe a new tunneling solution for the decay of a cosmic string into a burst of gravitational waves. We find the relevant instanton and compute the tunneling rate. Locally, our solution is just an analytic continuation of the Kerr…
Cosmic strings are topological defects possibly formed in the early Universe, which may be observable due to their gravitational effects on the cosmic microwave background radiation or gravitational wave experiments. To this effect it is…
A standard approach to analyzing tunneling processes in various physical contexts is to use instanton or imaginary time path techniques. For systems in which the tunneling takes place in a time dependent setting, the standard methods are…
The role of the identification of the vacuum and non-vacuum space-times in the computation of vacuum fluctuations in the presence of a cosmic string is discussed and an alternative interpretation of the renormalization is proposed. This…
Vacuum structure and global cosmic strings are analyzed in the effective theory of self-interacting O(2) scalar fields on (3+1)-manifolds with conical singularities. In the context of one-loop effective action computed by heat-kernel…
We study tunneling in one-dimensional quantum mechanics using the path integral in real time, where solutions of the classical equation of motion live in the complex plane. Analyzing solutions with small (complex) energy, relevant for…
Quantum cosmology uses a wave function to model the universe, but finding solutions for this poses a problem as it is difficult to define the boundary conditions or identify the correct path for a path integral. We begin the discussion by…
The false vacua of some potentials do not decay via Euclidean bounces. This typically happens for tunneling actions with a flat direction (in field configuration space) that is lifted by a perturbation into a sloping valley, pushing the…
If we imagine rewinding the universe to early times, the scale factor shrinks and the existence of a finite spatial volume may play a role in quantum tunnelling effects in a closed universe. It has recently been shown that such finite…
We investigate the decay of current on a superconducting cosmic string through quantum tunneling. We construct the instanton describing tunneling in a simple bosonic string model, and estimate the decay rate. The tunneling rate vanishes in…
We explore various non-supersymmetric type II string vacua constructed based on asymmetric orbifolds of tori with vanishing cosmological constant at the one loop. The string vacua we present are modifications of the models studied in…
The suggestion that there exist causally disconnected universes or sub-universes to explain the values of physical parameters such as the cosmological constant is discussed. A statistical model of the string landscape/topography is…
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…
Motivated by cosmological examples we study quantum field theoretical tunnelling from an initial state where the "classical field", i.e. the vacuum expectation value of the field operator is spatially homogeneous but performing a…
Cosmic strings provide a radically different paradigm for the formation of structure to the prevailing inflationary one. They afford some extra technical complications: for example, the calculation of the power spectrum of matter and…
We consider new cosmological solutions with a collapsing, an intermediate and an expanding phase. The boundary between the expanding (collapsing) phase and the intermediate phase is seen by comoving observers as a cosmological past (future)…