Vacuum Decay Induced by False Skyrmions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how false skyrmions in a modified Skyrme model can induce vacuum decay through quantum tunnelling, providing a quantitative analysis of the decay rate.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of false skyrmions in a chiral symmetry-breaking Skyrme model and calculates their role in false vacuum decay.

Findings

False skyrmions exist as metastable solutions.

Decay of false skyrmions triggers false vacuum decay.

Quantitative decay rate of the false vacuum is computed.

Abstract

We consider the Skyrme model modified by the addition of mass terms which explicitly break chiral symmetry and pick out a specific point on the model's target space as the unique true vacuum. However, they also allow the possibility of false vacua, local minima of the potential energy. These false vacuum configurations admit metastable skyrmions, which we call false skyrmions. False skyrmions can decay due to quantum tunnelling, consequently causing the decay of the false vacuum. We compute the rate of decay of the false vacuum due to the existence of false skyrmions.