Bubble nucleation and the Coleman-Weinberg model

Motivated by the "new inflationary universe scenario", we have made a detailed study of the bubble nucleation process in (nearly) Coleman-Weinberg models with small positive scalar field mass terms. Our goal has been to show the consistency and interrelation between Coleman's analysis of bubble nucleation in flat space, the work of Coleman and De Luccia on bubble nucleation with gravitational effects and the recent dramatically different results of Hawking and Moss on bubble nucleation in Coleman-Weinberg models in a de Sitter background. Many of our results apply to more general classes of potentials.