Tunneling decay of false kinks

2015 CAP Congress / Congrès de l’ACP 2015
Contribution ID : 860
compétition)
Type : Poster (Student, In Competition) / Affiche (Étudiant(e), inscrit à la
Tunneling decay of false kinks
Wednesday, 17 June 2015 19:10 (2)
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. As with any tunneling event, the
rate is proportional to exp −SE where SE 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, when
the parameters take values arbitrarily close to the “zones of dissociation”, that is, regions in parameter space
where SE can get arbitrarily small, implying that the kink is only barely stable. Thus, while the translationinvariant false vacuum may be very long-lived, the presence of kinks can give rise to accelerated vacuum
decay.
Primary author(s) : UNG, Yvan (University of Montreal)
Co-author(s) : MARLEAU, Luc (Université Laval); PARANJAPE, Manu (Université de Montréal); MACKENZIE,
Richard (U. Montréal); GOBEIL, Yan (McGill University); DUPUIS, Éric (University of Montreal)
Presenter(s) : UNG, Yvan (University of Montreal)
Session Classification : DTP Poster Session with beer / Session d’affiches, avec bière DPT
Track Classification : Theoretical Physics / Physique théorique (DTP-DPT)