Seeding decay of the false vacuum

TL;DR

This paper develops a theory for false vacuum decay triggered by spherical seeds with boundary energy, applicable at zero and finite temperatures, and validates it through simulations in Bose-Einstein Condensates.

Contribution

It introduces a novel theoretical framework for seeded false vacuum decay, including temperature effects, and confirms predictions with numerical simulations in BEC systems.

Findings

Seeded nucleation can induce false vacuum decay.

The theory matches simulation results in 2D BECs.

Finite temperature effects are incorporated into the decay model.

Abstract

We present a theory of false vacuum decay induced by spherical nucleation seeds. The type of seed considered has a boundary characterised by surface energy terms. The theory applies to false vacuum decay at zero and finite temperatures. Seeded nucleation may be important for enabling future false vacuum decay experiments on analogue systems using Bose Einstein Condensates (BEC). We show that our theory of seeded nucleation at finite temperature applied to a potassium BEC in two spatial dimensions agrees with numerical, real-time, simulations.