# Self-consistent radiative corrections to false vacuum decay

## TL;DR

This paper develops a self-consistent method to calculate quantum corrections to false vacuum decay rates, accounting for inhomogeneity, with implications for the metastability of the Standard Model Higgs vacuum.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to include full inhomogeneity in quantum corrections for false vacuum decay, applicable to models with classical or radiative instabilities.

## Key findings

- Inhomogeneity corrections can rival two-loop homogeneous corrections.
- The method applies to both classical and radiative instability scenarios.
- Analysis of simple thin-wall models demonstrates the significance of inhomogeneity effects.

## Abstract

With the Higgs mass now measured at the sub-percent level, the potential metastability of the electroweak vacuum of the Standard Model (SM) motivates renewed study of false vacuum decay in quantum field theory. In this note, we describe an approach to calculating quantum corrections to the decay rate of false vacua that is able to account fully and self-consistently for the underlying inhomogeneity of the solitonic tunneling configuration. We show that this method can be applied both to theories in which the instability arises already at the level of the classical potential and those in which the instability arises entirely through radiative effects, as is the case for the SM Higgs vacuum. We analyse two simple models in the thin-wall regime, and we show that the modifications of the one-loop corrections from accounting fully for the inhomogeneity can compete at the same level as the two-loop homogeneous corrections.