Tunneling decay of false kinks
Transcription
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)