Spontaneous and induced decay of metastable strings and domain walls (Q847073)

The paper generalizes the method used for analyzing the thermal and collision (of Goldstone bosons associated with transverse waves) effects in the decay of metastable strings to the case of a metastable domain wall. The paper has the character of a semi-review: Its longest section recapitulates in detail the technically simpler calculations for the processes with metastable strings. This is then followed by the calculation of the previously unknown pre-exponential factors of the decay rates for metastable domain walls. As in the string case, the authors derive a general formula for the probability of a wall breaking by a collision of an arbitrary number of bosons.