Related papers: Vacuum Tunneling by Cosmic Strings
A tunneling bounce driving the decay of a metastable vacuum must respect an integral constraint dictated by simple scaling arguments that is very useful to determine key properties of the bounce. After illustrating how this works in a…
We review recent simulations of the formation of a particular class of non-topological defects known as semilocal strings during a phase transition. Semilocal strings have properties that are intermediate between topological cosmic strings…
The meaning of `tunneling' in a timeless theory such as quantum cosmology is discussed. A recent suggestion of `tunneling' of the macroscopic universe at the classical turning point is analyzed in an anisotropic and inhomogeneous toy model.…
A gravitational scenario is proposed where the euclidean action is invariant under the isotropic and homogeneous version of the euclidean {\it U(1)} group of local transformations of the scale factor and scalar matter field, interpreting…
Perturbative estimates suggest that extended topological defects such as cosmic strings emit few particles, but numerical simulations of the fields from which they are constructed suggest the opposite. In this paper we study the decay of…
We develop the semiclassical method of complex trajectories in application to chaotic dynamical tunneling. First, we suggest a systematic numerical technique for obtaining complex tunneling trajectories by the gradual deformation of the…
A new mechanism of tunnelling at macroscopic distances is proposed for a wave packet localized in one-dimensional disordered potential with mirror symmetry, V(-x)=V(x). Unlike quantum tunnelling through a regular potential barrier, which…
In this paper we analyze one-loop quantum effects of a scalar field induced by a composite topological defect consisting a cosmic string on a p-dimensional brane and a (m+1)-dimensional global monopole in the transverse extra dimensions.…
We propose an approach to explaining why naive large quantum fluctuations are not the right estimate for the cosmological constant. We argue that the universe is in a superposition of many vacua, in such a way that the resulting…
We consider the decay of cosmic strings that are trapped in the false vacuum in a theory of scalar electrodynamics in 3+1 dimensions. We restrict our analysis to the case of thin-walled cosmic strings which occur when large magnetic flux…
It is shown that, to the lowest order in $\hbar,$ the particle production related to the tunneling that leads to the false vacuum decay is described by the orthogonal part of fluctuation field with respect to the bounce solution. As a…
We generalize the string method, originally designed for the study of thermally activated rare events, to the calculation of quantum tunneling rates. This generalization is based on the analogy between quantum mechanics and statistical…
We study the computational complexity of the physical problem of finding vacua of string theory which agree with data, such as the cosmological constant, and show that such problems are typically NP hard. In particular, we prove that in the…
We study the stability of supersymmetry breaking vacuum in the presence of cosmic strings arising in the messenger sector. For certain ranges of the couplings, the desired supersymmetry breaking vacua become unstable against decay into…
We show that in Euclidean field theories that have bounce solutions, the bounce with the least action is the global minimum of the action in an open space of field configurations. A rigorous upper bound on the minimal bounce action can…
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 systematically analyze the decay of metastable topological defects that arise from the spontaneous breakdown of gauge or global symmetries. Quantum-mechanical tunneling rates are estimated for a variety of decay processes. The decay rate…
We show that bosonic strings may be viewed as a particular class of vacua for N=1 superstrings, and N=1 superstrings may be viewed as a particular class of vacua for N=2 strings. Continuing this line of string hierarchies, we are led to…
This work establishes a firm relationship between classical nonlinear resonances and the phenomenon of dynamical tunneling. It is shown that the classical phase space with its hierarchy of resonance islands completely characterizes…
In dilaton gravity theories, we consider a string-like topological defect formed during U(1) gauge symmetry-breaking phase transition in the early Universe, and far from the cosmic string we have vacuum solutions of the generalized Einstein…