Fate of the False Vacuum Revisited

TL;DR

This paper investigates how environmental interactions influence false vacuum decay in quantum field theory, revealing that such effects can significantly alter tunneling rates, either enhancing or suppressing decay, which traditional methods overlook.

Contribution

It introduces a novel environmental effect on false vacuum decay, highlighting the importance of dissipation and fluctuations beyond the effective potential approach.

Findings

Environmental interactions can drastically alter decay rates.

Certain interactions enhance tunneling probability.

Other interactions suppress false vacuum decay.

Abstract

We find the novel effect on the decay of a false vacuum in view of quantum field theory, which is induced by a field coupling to the scalar field related to a first-order phase transition. This effect of the environment can never be included in the traditional method using the effective potential, and, in fact, acts as dissipative and fluctuation effects on tunneling phenomena. We show that the decay of the false vacuum is drastically either enhanced or suppressed. It is also clarified what kind of interaction enhance or suppress the tunneling probability.