Vacuum Tunneling in an Electroweak Model in Extra Dimensions With an External Flux

TL;DR

This paper explores how an external magnetic flux in an extra-dimensional electroweak model induces vacuum degeneracy breaking, enabling tunneling between distinct vacuum states and affecting particle masses.

Contribution

It introduces a method to compute vacuum tunneling probabilities in an extra-dimensional electroweak model with external flux, revealing new vacuum structure and mass implications.

Findings

External flux creates nondegenerate vacua.

Tunneling probabilities between vacua are calculated.

Field masses are affected by the false vacuum state.

Abstract

With the standard system for an SU(2) Higgs field in M_4 X S_1, the top and bottom component of the Higgs spinor have exactly the same coeficients for the quadratic and quadric terms. This makes the vacuum degenerate and thus there are no tunneling effects to zeroth order in radiative corrections of the vector gauge felds in the standard model with this extra dimensional geometry. However, if we include an external magnetic flux that permeates our manifold, then the top component of the Higgs spinor will have an additional term in its coefficient due to this theoretical flux with the usual charge assignments for the standard model. This extra term gives rise to two nondegenerate vacuum states for the resulting potential. We will compute the tunneling probability per unit time per unit volume between these vacuum states for the zero modes of our system as well as investigate the masses for the fields of the model using the false vacuum.