Vacuum Tunneling by Cosmic Strings

TL;DR

This paper investigates a novel vacuum tunneling process involving cosmic strings, presenting a new semi-classical method to estimate tunneling rates and discussing potential phenomenological implications.

Contribution

It introduces a new type of vacuum tunneling with topological defects, specifically cosmic strings, and proposes a reduction method for calculating the bounce action.

Findings

Existence of an O(2) x O(2) symmetric bounce configuration.

A semi-classical estimate for cosmic string induced tunneling rate.

Potential phenomenological applications discussed.

Abstract

We consider vacuum tunneling of a new kind where the false vacua are not translationally invariant, but have topological defects that break some of their translational symmetries. In the particular case where the topological defects are cosmic strings, we show the existence of an O(2) \times O(2) symmetric bounce configuration that allows a semi-classical estimate of the rate of cosmic string induced tunneling. A method of reduction is then suggested for simplifying the computation of the bounce action. Some phenomenological applications are described.