Thermal Effects on Decays of a Metastable Brane Configuration

TL;DR

This paper investigates how finite temperature effects accelerate the decay of a false vacuum in type IIA string theory, highlighting the role of thermally excited modes and cosmic strings in enhancing decay rates.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of thermal corrections to the DBI action and demonstrates how thermal excitations significantly increase vacuum decay rates in string theory.

Findings

Thermal corrections increase the decay rate of the false vacuum.

Thermally excited states facilitate bubble nucleation and vacuum decay.

The false vacuum lifetime is substantially shortened at finite temperature.

Abstract

We study thermal effects on a decay process of a false vacuum in type IIA string theory. At finite temperature, the potential of the theory is corrected and also thermally excited modes enhance the decay rate. The false vacuum can accommodate a string-like object. This cosmic string makes the bubble creation rate much larger and causes an inhomogeneous vacuum decay. We investigate thermal corrections to the DBI action for the bubble/string bound state and discuss a thermally assisted tunneling process. We show that thermally excited states enhance the tunneling rate of the decay process, which makes the life-time of the false vacuum much shorter.