arXiv subjects

V. E. Maslov

Publications and source records attributed to V. E. Maslov.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Thermal false vacuum decay near black holes is aspherical

We study decay of a scalar field false vacuum near a (3+1)-dimensional Schwarzschild black hole equilibrated at Hawking temperature with the environment. Our scalar field model has negative quartic self-coupling and thereby resembles Higgs sector of the Standard Model in the large-field limit. We demonstrate that if the black hole is not too small, the false vacuum in this model decays aspherically with regard to the black hole center: via formation of expanding true vacuum bubbles emerging on the outer side of the event horizon. More specifically, we identify three regimes of the decay. For the largest and coldest black holes, the main mechanism is quantum tunneling described by an infinitesimally thin bounce sitting at some point of the horizon. In the intermediate-mass regime, the vacuum is destroyed by thermal fluctuations creating aspherical critical bubbles in the horizon vicinity. Finally, near the smallest black holes thermal fluctuations still guide the decay but the dominant critical bubble is spherically symmetric and covers the entire horizon.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2023

Analytic description of monodromy oscillons

We develop precise analytic description of oscillons - long-lived quasiperiodic field lumps - in scalar field theories with nearly quadratic potentials, e.g. the monodromy potential. Such oscillons are essentially nonperturbative due to large amplitudes, and they achieve extreme longevities. Our method is based on a consistent expansion in the anharmonicity of the potential at strong fields, which is made accurate by introducing a field-dependent "running mass." At every order, we compute effective action for the oscillon profile and other parameters. Comparison with explicit numerical simulations in (3+1)-dimensional monodromy model shows that our method is significantly more precise than other analytic approaches.

hep-th↗

arXiv2022

An Effective Field Theory for Large Oscillons

We consider oscillons - localized, quasiperiodic, and extremely long-living classical solutions in models with real scalar fields. We develop their effective description in the limit of large size at finite field strength. Namely, we note that nonlinear long-range field configurations can be described by an effective complex field $ψ(t, \boldsymbol{x})$ which is related to the original fields by a canonical transformation. The action for $ψ$ has the form of a systematic gradient expansion. At every order of the expansion, such an effective theory has a global U(1) symmetry and hence a family of stationary nontopological solitons - oscillons. The decay of the latter objects is a nonperturbative process from the viewpoint of the effective theory. Our approach gives an intuitive understanding of oscillons in full nonlinearity and explains their longevity. Importantly, it also provides reliable selection criteria for models with long-lived oscillons. This technique is more precise in the nonrelativistic limit, in the notable cases of nonlinear, extremely long-lived, and large objects, and also in lower spatial dimensions. We test the effective theory by performing explicit numerical simulations of a $(d+1)$-dimensional scalar field with a plateau potential.

hep-th↗

arXiv2020

Chaotic solitons in driven sine-Gordon model

Profiles of static solitons in one-dimensional scalar field theory satisfy the same equations as trajectories of a fictitious particle in multidimensional mechanics. We argue that the structure and properties of the solitons are essentially different if the respective mechanical motions are chaotic. This happens in multifield models and models with spatially dependent potential. We illustrate our findings using one-field sine-Gordon model in external Dirac comb potential. First, we show that the number of different "chaotic" solitons grows exponentially with their length, and the growth rate is related to the topological entropy of the mechanical system. Second, the field values of stable solitons form a fractal; we compute its box-counting dimension. Third, we demonstrate that the distribution of field values in the fractal is related to the metric entropy of the analogous mechanical system.

hep-th↗