False vacuum decay in the ( 1 + 1 )-dimensional φ 4 theory

Szász-Schagrin, Dávid and Takács, Gábor (2022) False vacuum decay in the ( 1 + 1 )-dimensional φ 4 theory. PHYSICAL REVIEW D, 106 (2). ISSN 2470-0010

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Abstract

The false vacuum is a metastable state that can occur in quantum field theory, and its decay was first studied semiclassically by Coleman. In this work, we consider the 1+1 dimensional φ4 theory, which is the simplest model that provides a realization of this problem. We realize the decay as a quantum quench and study the subsequent evolution using a truncated Hamiltonian approach. In the thin wall limit, the decay rate can be described in terms of the mass of the kink interpolating between the vacua in the degenerate limit and the energy density difference between the false and true vacuum once the degeneracy is lifted by a symmetry breaking field, also known as the latent heat. We demonstrate that the numerical simulations agree well with the theoretical prediction for several values of the coupling in a range of the value of the latent heat, apart from a normalization factor, which only depends on the interaction strength.

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