TY - JOUR
T1 - Vacua on the Brink of Decay
AU - Pimentel, Guilherme L.
AU - Polyakov, Alexander M.
AU - Tarnopolsky, Grigory M.
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank Daniel Baumann, Garrett Goon, Diego Hofman, Viatcheslav Mukhanov, Andrew Strominger, Leon Takhtajan and Grigory Volovik for useful discussions, and Daniel Baumann, Garrett Goon and Diego Hofman for comments on a draft. The work of G.T. was supported by the MURI grant W911NF-14-1-0003 from ARO and by DOE grant de-sc0007870. G.P. acknowledges funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie-Sk lodowska Curie grant agreement number 751778. The work of G.P. is part of the Delta ITP consortium, a program of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) that is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Education,
Funding Information:
Culture and Science (OCW). G.P. also acknowledges support from a Starting Grant of the European Research Council (ERC STG Grant 279617).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 World Scientific Publishing Company.
PY - 2018/8/1
Y1 - 2018/8/1
N2 - We consider free massive matter fields in static scalar, electric and gravitational backgrounds. Tuning these backgrounds to the brink of vacuum decay, we identify a term in their effective action that is singular. This singular term is universal, being independent of the features of the background configuration. In the case of gravitational backgrounds, it can be interpreted as a quantum mechanical analog of Choptuik scaling. If the background is tuned slightly above the instability threshold, this singular term gives the leading contribution to the vacuum decay rate. Dedicated to the memory of Ludwig Faddeev.
AB - We consider free massive matter fields in static scalar, electric and gravitational backgrounds. Tuning these backgrounds to the brink of vacuum decay, we identify a term in their effective action that is singular. This singular term is universal, being independent of the features of the background configuration. In the case of gravitational backgrounds, it can be interpreted as a quantum mechanical analog of Choptuik scaling. If the background is tuned slightly above the instability threshold, this singular term gives the leading contribution to the vacuum decay rate. Dedicated to the memory of Ludwig Faddeev.
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U2 - 10.1142/S0129055X18400135
DO - 10.1142/S0129055X18400135
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85049937206
VL - 30
JO - Reviews in Mathematical Physics
JF - Reviews in Mathematical Physics
SN - 0129-055X
IS - 7
M1 - 1840013
ER -