Tunneling decay of false kinks

Abstract

We consider the decay of "false kinks," that is, kinks formed in a scalar field theory with a pair of degenerate symmetry-breaking false vacua in 1+1 dimensions. The true vacuum is symmetric. A second scalar field and a peculiar potential are added in order for the kink to be classically stable. We find an expression for the decay rate of a false kink. As with any tunneling event, the rate is proportional to $\exp (-S_E)$ where $S_E$ is the Euclidean action of the bounce describing the tunneling event. This factor varies wildly depending on the parameters of the model. Of interest is the fact that for certain parameters $S_E$ can get arbitrarily small, implying that the kink is only barely stable. Thus, while the false vacuum itself may be very long-lived, the presence of kinks can give rise to rapid vacuum decay.

21 pages, 13 figures

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Domain walls seeding the electroweak phase transition
• Self-consistent solitons for vacuum decay in radiatively generated potentials
• Head butting sheep: Kink Collisions in the Presence of False Vacua
• Tunneling decay of false domain walls: the silence of the lambs
• Novel results for kinklike structures and their connections to quantum mechanics
• Vacuum Decay Induced by False Skyrmions
• Chaotic instantons in scalar field theory