The Role of Fermions in Bubble Nucleation

Abstract

We present a study of the role of fermions in the decay of metastable states of a scalar field via bubble nucleation. We analyze both one and three-dimensional systems by using a gradient expansion for the calculation of the fermionic determinant. The results of the one-dimensional case are compared to the exact results of previous work.

15 pages, revtex, 9 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Real Time Analysis of Thermal Activation via Sphaleron Transitions
• Polarons as Nucleation Droplets in Non-Degenerate Polymers
• Thermal Decays in a Hot Fermi Gas

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Non-Perturbative Renormalization Flow in Quantum Field Theory and Statistical Physics
• First-Order Chiral Phase Transition in High-Energy Collisions: Can Nucleation Prevent Spinodal Decomposition?
• Nucleating quark droplets in the core of magnetars
• Dynamical Viscosity of Nucleating Bubbles
• Comparison of two methods for calculating nucleation rates
• Effects from inhomogeneities in the chiral transition
• Metastable anisotropy orientation of nematic quantum Hall fluids