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

DOI10.1063/1.4947263zbMATH Open1335.81104arXiv1506.05838OpenAlexW1171164067MaRDI QIDQ2804972FDOQ2804972

Richard MacKenzie, M. B. Paranjape, Mareike Haberichter, Yvan Ung

Publication date: 9 May 2016

Published in: Journal of Mathematical Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: 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.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.05838

zbMATH Keywords

metastable states

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Symmetry breaking in quantum theory (81R40) Axiomatic quantum field theory; operator algebras (81T05)

Cites Work

• Cosmic strings and domain walls
• Unconstrained Optimization by Approximation of the Gradient Path

Cited In (5)

• Tunneling decay of false vortices with gravitation
• False vacuum decay: effective one-loop action for pair creation of domain walls.
• Solitary oscillations and multiple antikink-kink pairs in the double sine-Gordon model
• Chaotic instantons in scalar field theory
• Head butting sheep: kink collisions in the presence of false vacua

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