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False vacuum decay rates, more precisely

Wen-Yuan Ai*, Jean Alexandre†, and Sarben Sarkar‡

  • Theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom

  • *wenyuan.ai@kcl.ac.uk
  • †jean.alexandre@kcl.ac.uk
  • ‡sarben.sarkar@kcl.ac.uk
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Phys. Rev. D 109, 045010 – Published 21 February, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.109.045010

Abstract

We develop a method for accurately calculating vacuum decay rates beyond the thin-wall regime in pure scalar field theory at the one-loop level of the effective action. It accounts for radiative effects resulting from quantum corrections to the classical bounce, including gradient effects stemming from the inhomogeneity of the bounce background. To achieve this, it is necessary to compute not only the functional determinant of the fluctuation operator in the background of the classical bounce but also its functional derivative evaluated at the classical bounce. The former is efficiently calculated using the Gel’fand-Yaglom method. We illustrate how the latter can also be calculated with the same method, combined with a computation of various Green’s functions.

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Phys. Rev. D 109, 045010– Published 21 February, 2024
  • Received 17 December 2023
  • Accepted 26 January 2024
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