Vacuum decay and internal symmetries

TL;DR

This paper investigates how internal symmetries influence vacuum decay via bubble nucleation, revealing that zero modes linked to symmetry breaking enhance tunneling rates and developing a formalism to evaluate these effects in various spacetime geometries.

Contribution

It introduces a general formalism to assess the impact of internal symmetry zero modes on bubble nucleation rates in flat and curved spacetimes.

Findings

Zero modes associated with symmetry breaking enhance tunneling rates.

The formalism applies to both flat and curved spacetime scenarios.

Symmetry considerations significantly affect vacuum decay processes.

Abstract

We study the effects of internal symmetries on the decay by bubble nucleation of a metastable false vacuum. The zero modes about the bounce solution that are associated with the breaking of continuous internal symmetries result in an enhancement of the tunneling rate into vacua in which some of the symmetries of the initial state are spontaneously broken. We develop a general formalism for evaluating the effects of these zero modes on the bubble nucleation rate in both flat and curved space-times.