Thermal Decays in a Hot Fermi Gas

Abstract

We present a study of the decay of metastable states of a scalar field via thermal activation, in the presence of a finite density of fermions. The process we consider is the nucleation of ``{\it droplets}'' of true vacuum inside the false one. We analyze a one-dimensional system of interacting bosons and fermions, considering the latter at finite temperature and with a given chemical potential. As a consequence of a non-equilibrium formalism previously developed, we obtain time-dependent decay rates.

18 pages, REVTEX, 9 figures available upon request

References in corpus (3)

• Can Disordered Chiral Condensates Form? A Dynamical Perspective
• Real Time Analysis of Thermal Activation via Sphaleron Transitions
• Polarons as Nucleation Droplets in Non-Degenerate Polymers

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• Metastable anisotropy orientation of nematic quantum Hall fluids