Tunneling decay of false domain walls: the silence of the lambs

TL;DR

This paper investigates the quantum tunneling process causing the decay of metastable false domain walls in a two-scalar-field theory, providing a method to compute the tunneling amplitude for their disintegration.

Contribution

It introduces a novel calculation of tunneling amplitudes for false domain wall decay in a two-field model with a unique shepherd-sheep analogy.

Findings

Derived a formula for tunneling amplitude of false domain wall decay

Demonstrated the disintegration process via quantum tunneling in the model

Provided insights into metastable state decay mechanisms

Abstract

We study the decay of "false" domain walls, which are metastable states of the quantum theory where the true vacuum is trapped inside the wall, with the false vacuum outside. We consider a theory with two scalar fields, a shepherd field and a field of sheep. The shepherd field serves to herd the solitons of the sheep field so that they are nicely bunched together. However, quantum tunnelling of the shepherd field releases the sheep to spread out uncontrollably. We show how to calculate the tunnelling amplitude for such a disintegration.