TY  - JOUR
AU  - Batini, Laura
AU  - Chatrchyan, Aleksandr
AU  - Berges, Jürgen
TI  - Real-time dynamics of false vacuum decay
JO  - Physical review / D
VL  - 109
IS  - 2
SN  - 2470-0010
CY  - Ridge, NY
PB  - American Physical Society
M1  - PUBDB-2024-00527
M1  - arXiv:2310.04206
M1  - DESY-23-158
M1  - NORDITA 2023-082
SP  - 023502
PY  - 2024
N1  - Phys. Rev. D 109 (2024) 2, 023502. 18 pages, 12 figures. v2: journal version
AB  - We investigate false vacuum decay of a relativistic scalar field initialized in the metastable minimum of an asymmetric double-well potential. The transition to the true ground state is a well-defined initial-value problem in real time, which can be formulated in nonequilibrium quantum field theory on a closed time path. We employ the nonperturbative framework of the two-particle irreducible (2PI) quantum effective action at next-to-leading order in a large-N expansion. We also compare to classical-statistical field theory simulations on a lattice in the high-temperature regime. By this, we demonstrate that the real-time decay rates are comparable to those obtained from the conventional Euclidean (bounce) approach. In general, we find that the decay rates are time dependent. For a more comprehensive description of the dynamics, we extract a time-dependent effective potential, which becomes convex during the nonequilibrium transition process. By solving the quantum evolution equations for the one- and two-point correlation functions for vacuum initial conditions, we demonstrate that quantum corrections can lead to transitions that are not captured by classical-statistical approximations.
KW  - false vacuum: decay (INSPIRE)
KW  - higher-order: 1 (INSPIRE)
KW  - field theory: scalar (INSPIRE)
KW  - two-point function (INSPIRE)
KW  - ground state (INSPIRE)
KW  - expansion 1/N (INSPIRE)
KW  - effective action (INSPIRE)
KW  - asymmetry (INSPIRE)
KW  - nonperturbative (INSPIRE)
KW  - two-particle (INSPIRE)
KW  - boundary condition (INSPIRE)
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:001174871900002
DO  - DOI:10.1103/PhysRevD.109.023502
UR  - https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/record/602201
ER  -