Breaking of a metastable string at finite temperature

Abstract

We consider the phase transition of a string with tension $\eps_1$ to a string with a smaller tension $\eps_2$ at finite temperature. For sufficiently small temperatures the transition proceeds through thermally catalyzed quantum tunneling, and we calculate in arbitrary number of dimensions the thermal catalysis factor. At $\eps_2=0$ the found formula for the decay rate also describes a break up of a metastable string into two pieces.

15 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Decay of Metastable Topological Defects
• Instantons for Vacuum Decay at Finite Temperature in the Thin Wall Limit
• The spontaneous breaking of a metastable string
• Metastable Strings in Abelian Higgs Models Embedded in Non-Abelian Theories: Calculating the Decay Rate

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Closed flux tubes in higher representations and their string description in D=2+1 SU(N) gauge theories
• Destruction of a metastable string by particle collisions
• Spontaneous and Induced Decay of Metastable Strings and Domain Walls
• String melting in a photon bath
• Metastable cosmic strings are broken at the start
• Tunnelling of Pulsating Strings in Deformed Minkowski Spacetime