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arXiv · 2410.19418

Saddle-point approximation to the false vacuum decay at finite temperature in one-dimensional quantum mechanics

Koji Harada·Shuichiro Tao·Qiang Yin
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Abstract

We calculate the false-vacuum decay rate in one-dimensional quantum mechanics on the basis of the saddle-point approximation in the Euclidean path integral at finite temperature. The saddle points are the finite-T and shifted bounce solutions, which are finite-period analogs of the (zero-temperature) bounce solution, and the shot solutions. We re-examined the zero-temperature result by Callan and Coleman and compare with the zero-temperature limit of our results. We also perform some numerical calculations to illustrate the temperature dependence of the decay rate and compare it with the result by Affleck.

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Koji Harada, Shuichiro Tao, Qiang Yin. 2024-10-25. Saddle-point approximation to the false vacuum decay at finite temperature in one-dimensional quantum mechanics. https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.19418

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