2019/09/30 by Shao-Jiang Wang
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Classical mechanics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #False vacuum #Field (mathematics) #Gaussian #Geometry #Homogeneous #Mathematics #Mechanics #Physics #QED vacuum #Quantum #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Scalar (mathematics) #Scalar field #Semiclassical physics #Statistical physics #Time derivative #Vacuum state #Vector field #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.100.096019
published as Phys. Rev. D 100, 096019 (2019) · v1, 9 pages, 6 figures; v2, to match the published version in PRD, title slightly changed by editor
arxiv created 2019/11/26 · openalex publication_date 2019/11/26 · arxiv updated 2020/01/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Recently, a novel phenomenon is observed for vacuum decay to proceed via classically allowed dynamical evolution from initial configurations of false vacuum fluctuations. With the help of some occasionally developed large fluctuations in time derivative of a homogeneous scalar field that is initially sitting at the false vacuum, the flyover vacuum decay is proposed if the initial Gaussian profile of field velocity contains a spatial region where the field velocity is large enough to flyover the potential barrier. In this paper, we point out that, even if the initial profile of field velocity is nowhere to be large enough to classically overcome the barrier, the semiclassical vacuum decay could still be possible if the initial profile of field velocity extends over large enough region.