A New Mechanism for Bubble Nucleation: Classical Transitions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a classical transition mechanism for bubble nucleation in scalar fields with multiple vacua, showing how bubble collisions can induce new bubble formation beyond quantum tunneling, affecting cosmological models.

Contribution

It proposes a novel classical process for bubble nucleation during collisions, expanding the understanding of phase transitions in scalar field theories with multiple minima.

Findings

Classical transitions can efficiently produce new bubbles during collisions.

This mechanism alters the expected bubble formation rates and patterns.

It impacts models of cosmological phase transitions and vacuum decay.

Abstract

Given a scalar field with metastable minima, bubbles nucleate quantum mechanically. When bubbles collide, energy stored in the bubble walls is converted into kinetic energy of the field. This kinetic energy can facilitate the classical nucleation of new bubbles in minima that lie below those of the "parent" bubbles. This process is efficient and classical, and changes the dynamics and statistics of bubble formation in models with multiple vacua, relative to that derived from quantum tunneling.