2007/08/31 by Saswat Sarangi, Sash Sarangi, Gary Shiu +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Condensed matter physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #False vacuum #Field (mathematics) #Percolation (cognitive psychology) #Physics #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum mechanics #Quantum tunnelling #Resonance (particle physics) #Scanning tunneling spectroscopy #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1142/s0217751x09042529
published as Int.J.Mod.Phys.A24:741-788,2009 · 47 pages, 16 figures. Acknowledgements added
arxiv created 2007/12/21 · openalex publication_date 2009/02/10 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2020/11/23 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Motivated by the possibility of a string landscape, we re-examine tunneling of a scalar field across single/multiple barriers. Recent investigations have suggested modifications to the usual picture of false vacuum decay that leads to efficient and rapid tunneling in the landscape when certain conditions are met. This can be due to stringy effects (e.g. tunneling via the DBI action), or effects arising from the presence of multiple vacua (e.g. resonance tunneling). In this paper we discuss both DBI tunneling and resonance tunneling. We provide a QFT treatment of resonance tunneling using the Schrödinger functional approach. We also show how DBI tunneling for supercritical barriers can naturally lead to conditions suitable for resonance tunneling. We argue, using basic ideas from percolation theory, that tunneling can be rapid in a landscape where a typical vacuum has multiple decay channels, and discuss various cosmological implications. This rapidity vacuum decay can happen even if there are no resonance/DBI tunneling enhancements, solely due to the presence of a large number of decay channels. Finally, we consider various ways of circumventing a recent no-go theorem for resonance tunneling in quantum field theory.