1992/11/25 by Erick J. Weinberg · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #astro-ph #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.47.4614
published as Phys.Rev. D47 (1993) 4614-4627 · 39 pages, CU-TP-577
arxiv created 1992/11/25 · openalex publication_date 1993/05/15 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
The standard bounce formalism for calculating the decay rate of a metastable vacuum cannot be applied to theories in which the symmetry breaking is due to radiative corrections, because in such theories the tree-level action has no bounce solutions. In this paper I derive a modified formalism to deal with such cases. As in the usual case, the bubble nucleation rate may be written in the form A e-B. To leading approximation, B is the bounce action obtained by replacing the tree-level potential by the leading one-loop approximation to the effective potential, in agreement with the generally adopted \it ad hoc remedy. The next correction to B (which is proportional to an inverse power of a small coupling) is given in terms of the next-to-leading term in the effective potential and the leading correction to the two-derivative term in the effective action. The corrections beyond these (which may be included in the prefactor) do not have simple expressions in terms of the effective potential and the other functions in the effective action. In particular, the scalar-loop terms which give an imaginary part to the effective potential do not explicitly appear; the corresponding effects are included in a functional determinant which gives a manifestly real result for the nucleation rate.