Tunneling decay of false kinks

Dupuis, Éric; Gobeil, Yan; MacKenzie, R.; Marleau, Luc; Paranjape, M. B.; Ung, Yvan

doi:10.1103/physrevd.92.025031

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Related work of similar nature can be found in [33] [34]. More recently this phenomenon has drawn attention in other field theoretic contexts [35] [36], and in superstring theory, similar results are obtained regarding brane induced vacuum decay. See for instance […”

Section: Energetics and Dynamics Of The Thin False Stringsupporting

confidence: 68%

Stability Longevity and All That: False Vacua and Topological Defects

Yajnik

2017

Gravity and the Quantum

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I present two interesting studies related to the role of solitons in theories with spontaneous symmetry breaking. Quantised fermions coupled to solitons are known to induce fractional fermion number. I present an example where an unstable topological solution binding a zero mode of a majorana fermion gets stabilised due to the induced fractional number. Thus neither is the cosmic string stable nor is the fermion number conserved, yet the bound state then becomes stable due to Quantum Mechanics. The other phenomenon concerns a metastable vacuum getting destabilised due to the presence of a cosmic string. This happens because the scalar field signalling spontaneous symmetry breaking acquires a vacuum expectation value approaching its true vacuum value in the core of the string. Thus the string acts like a seed nucleating the true vacuum. The instanton mediating between the false vacuum and the exit point into the true vacuum is shown to exist and graphically displayed through a numeric calculation. T. Padmanabhan has been a long time friend and was collaborator for early investigations in this direction. I review these works done subsequently with other collaborators as a felicitation to him on his sixtieth birthday.

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Section: Energetics and Dynamics Of The Thin False Stringsupporting

confidence: 68%

Stability Longevity and All That: False Vacua and Topological Defects

Yajnik

2017

Gravity and the Quantum

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“…We compute the amplitude for such a decay in a specific model analytically, aided by numerical calculations, within a well-defined approximation scheme. We have also studied an analogous model [4], but in that model, there are not multiple quanta of one field trapped inside the domain wall.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tunneling decay of false domain walls: The silence of the lambs

Haberichter

MacKenzie

Paranjape

et al. 2016

Journal of Mathematical Physics

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We study the decay of "false" domain walls, which are metastable states of the quantum theory where the true vacuum is trapped inside the wall, with the false vacuum outside. We consider a theory with two scalar fields, a shepherd field and a field of sheep. The shepherd field serves to herd the solitons of the sheep field so that they are nicely bunched together. However, quantum tunnelling of the shepherd field releases the sheep to spread out uncontrollably. We show how to calculate the tunnelling amplitude for such a disintegration.

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“…Different topological solitons such as metastable monopoles [17] and domain walls [30,31] were also studied in similar models with flat spacetime. Obtaining a generalization in curved spacetime for these defects would also be interesting.…”

Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tunneling decay of false vortices with gravitation

Dupuis

Gobeil

Lee

et al. 2017

J. High Energ. Phys.

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Abstract:We study the effect of vortices on the tunneling decay of a symmetry-breaking false vacuum in three spacetime dimensions with gravity. The scenario considered is one in which the initial state, rather than being the homogeneous false vacuum, contains false vortices. The question addressed is whether, and, if so, under which circumstances, the presence of vortices has a significant catalyzing effect on vacuum decay. After studying the existence and properties of vortices, we study their decay rate through quantum tunneling using a variety of techniques. In particular, for so-called thin-wall vortices we devise a oneparameter family of configurations allowing a quantum-mechanical calculation of tunneling. Also for thin-wall vortices, we employ the Israel junction conditions between the interior and exterior spacetimes. Matching these two spacetimes reveals a decay channel which results in an unstable, expanding vortex. We find that the tunneling exponent for vortices, which is the dominant factor in the decay rate, is half that for Coleman-de Luccia bubbles. This implies that vortices are short-lived, making them cosmologically significant even for low vortex densities. In the limit of the vanishing gravitational constant we smoothly recover our earlier results for the decay of the false vortex in a model without gravity.

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Tunneling decay of false kinks

Cited by 10 publications

References 8 publications

Stability Longevity and All That: False Vacua and Topological Defects

Stability Longevity and All That: False Vacua and Topological Defects

Tunneling decay of false domain walls: The silence of the lambs

Tunneling decay of false vortices with gravitation

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