Vacuum decay induced by false Skyrmions

Abstract

We consider the Skyrme model modified by the addition of mass terms which explicitly break chiral symmetry and pick out a specific point on the model's target space as the unique true vacuum. However, they also allow the possibility of false vacua, local minima of the potential energy. These false vacuum configurations admit metastable skyrmions, which we call false skyrmions. False skyrmions can decay due to quantum tunnelling, consequently causing the decay of the false vacuum. We compute the rate of decay of the false vacuum due to the existence of false skyrmions.

False vacuum Skyrmions revisited

“…The potential of the Skyrme model can be adjusted to model various physical effects, for example, to construct Skyrmions with low binding energies, the pion mass term (1.3) can be supplemented with an additional term proportional to Tr (1l − U ) 4 [40]. Another interesting possibility is to consider a false vacuum potential [46]…”

“…However, the previous analyse of the multisoliton solutions of the false vacuum Skyrme model was restricted to an effective theory related to the rational map approximation. Therefore, re-examination of the results obtained in the paper [46] seems to be warranted.…”

“…An interesting possibility is to consider a potential of the Skyrme model, which possesses both true and false vacua [46,47]. Presence of the false vacuum may affect the properties of the solitons, they become meta-stable [46,48,49], the collisions of the solitons could induce the decay of the false vacuum [50] and various radiative effects [51].…”

“…An interesting possibility is to consider a potential of the Skyrme model, which possesses both true and false vacua [46,47]. Presence of the false vacuum may affect the properties of the solitons, they become meta-stable [46,48,49], the collisions of the solitons could induce the decay of the false vacuum [50] and various radiative effects [51]. However, the previous analyse of the multisoliton solutions of the false vacuum Skyrme model was restricted to an effective theory related to the rational map approximation.…”

“…In this paper, we will study classically stable multisoliton solutions of the Skyrme model with the false vacuum potential, discussed earlier in [46]. In particular, we investigate Skyrmions of higher degrees and examine the regions of the negative topological charge density, which appear for the solitons of degrees Q = 3, 5, 6 and may have an important effect on false vacuum instability.…”