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

We study the decay of “false” domain walls, that is, 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 solit...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of mathematical physics 2016-04, Vol.57 (4), p.1
Main Authors: Haberichter, Mareike, MacKenzie, Richard, Paranjape, M. B., Ung, Yvan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS
Decay
Disintegration
Domain walls
Magnetic fields
Metastable state
METASTABLE STATES
PARTICLE DECAY
Physics
QUANTUM MECHANICS
Quantum physics
Quantum theory
Quantum tunnelling
SCALAR FIELDS
Sheep
Solitary waves
TUNNEL EFFECT
Tunneling
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We study the decay of “false” domain walls, that is, 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.
ISSN:0022-2488
1089-7658
DOI:10.1063/1.4947263