Vacuum decay induced by false Skyrmions

We consider the Skyrme model modified by the addition of mass terms which explicitly break chiral symmetry and pick out a specific point on the model’s target space as the unique true vacuum. However, they also allow the possibility of false vacua, local minima of the potential energy. These false v...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review. D 2019-01, Vol.99 (1), p.016016, Article 016016
Main Authors: Dupuis, Éric, Haberichter, Mareike, MacKenzie, Richard, Paranjape, M. B., Yajnik, U. A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Decay rate
Hypothetical particles
Particle theory
Potential energy
Quantum tunnelling
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 consider the Skyrme model modified by the addition of mass terms which explicitly break chiral symmetry and pick out a specific point on the model’s target space as the unique true vacuum. However, they also allow the possibility of false vacua, local minima of the potential energy. These false vacuum configurations admit metastable skyrmions, which we call false skyrmions. False skyrmions can decay due to quantum tunneling, consequently causing the decay of the false vacuum. We compute the rate of decay of the false vacuum due to the existence of false skyrmions.
ISSN:2470-0010
2470-0029
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevD.99.016016