Influence of nontrivial backgrounds and decoherence on vacuum decay

TL;DR

This paper explores how nontrivial backgrounds and environmental interactions influence vacuum decay processes across various spacetime geometries, including de Sitter, FRW, and Minkowski, highlighting new solutions and effects like decoherence.

Contribution

The study provides new solutions for vacuum decay in non-Minkowski spacetimes and analyzes decoherence effects in Minkowski space, extending understanding of vacuum stability in different cosmological settings.

Findings

Vacuum decay solutions in de Sitter and FRW universes are derived.

Decoherence effects significantly impact bubble nucleation in Minkowski spacetime.

Environmental interactions influence quantum-to-classical transition of vacuum bubbles.

Abstract

We present new solutions of vacuum decay in non-Minkowski spacetimes. On a de Sitter background, the tunneling between vacuum states with a nonvanishing energy difference has been considered, whereas in the special case of degenerate vacua we extended the treatment to a power-law FRW-universe. Additionally, we dicuss the vacuum decay in static spacetimes. In the case of Minkowski spacetime, we include interaction with an environmental field and analyze the effects of decoherence and the quantum-to-classical transition of the nucleating bubble.