Self-consistent solitons for vacuum decay in radiatively generated potentials

TL;DR

This paper develops a Green's function method to accurately compute vacuum decay tunneling rates in models with radiatively generated potentials, emphasizing the importance of gradient effects and self-consistent configurations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel Green's function approach for calculating tunneling rates in radiative potentials, incorporating self-consistency and gradient effects.

Findings

Gradient effects significantly influence tunneling configurations.

The method provides more accurate decay rate calculations.

Self-consistent solutions differ from traditional approximations.

Abstract

We use a Green's function approach in order to develop a method for calculating the tunneling rate between radiatively-generated non-degenerate vacua. We apply this to a model that exhibits spontaneous symmetry breaking via the Coleman-Weinberg mechanism, where we determine the self-consistent tunneling configuration and illustrate the impact of gradient effects that arise from accounting for the underlying space-time inhomogeneity.