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Register a new userA direct approach to quantum tunneling
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The decay rates of quasistable states in quantum field theories are usually calculated using instanton methods. Standard derivations of these methods rely in a crucial way upon deformations and analytic continuations of the physical potential, and on the saddle point approximation. While the resulting procedure can be checked against other semi-classical approaches in some one-dimensional cases, it is challenging to trace the role of the relevant physical scales, and any intuitive handle on the precision of the approximations involved are at best obscure. In this paper, we use a physical definition of the tunneling probability to derive a formula for the decay rate in both quantum mechanics and quantum field theory directly from the Minkowski path integral, without reference to unphysical deformations of the potential. There are numerous benefits to this approach, from non-perturbative applications to precision calculations and aesthetic simplicity.
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Perturbative quantum field theory usually uses second quantisation and Feynman diagrams. The worldline formalism provides an alternative approach based on first quantised particle path integrals, similar in spirit to string perturbation theory. Here we review the history, main features and present applications of the formalism. Our emphasis is on recent developments such as the path integral representation of open fermion lines, the description of colour using auxiliary worldline fields, incorporation of higher spin, and extension of the formalism to non-commutative space.
In this paper we compute the leading order Casimir energy for the electromagnetic field (EM) in an open ended perfectly conducting rectangular waveguide in three spatial dimensions by a direct approach. For this purpose we first obtain the second quantized expression for the EM field with boundary conditions which would be appropriate for a waveguide. We then obtain the Casimir energy by two different procedures. Our main approach does not contain any analytic continuation techniques. The second approach involves the routine zeta function regularization along with some analytic continuation techniques. Our two approaches yield identical results. This energy has been calculated previously for the EM field in a rectangular waveguide using an indirect approach invoking analogies between EM fields and massless scalar fields, and using complicated analytic continuation techniques, and the results are identical to ours. We have also calculated the pressures on different sides and the total Casimir energy per unit length, and plotted these quantities as a function of the cross-sectional dimensions of the waveguide. We also present a physical discussion about the rather peculiar effect of the change in the sign of the pressures as a function of the shape of the cross-sectional area.
A new general formalism for determining the electric multipole polarizabilities of quantum (atomic and nuclear) bound systems based on the use of the transition matrix in momentum space has been developed. As distinct from the conventional approach with the application of the spectral expansion of the total Greens function, our approach does not require preliminary determination of the entire unperturbated spectrum; instead, it makes possible to calculate the polarizability of a few-body bound complex directly based on solving integral equations for the wave function of the ground bound state and the transition matrix at negative energy, both of them being real functions of momenta. A formula for the multipole polarizabilities of a two-body bound complex formed by a central interaction potential has been derived and studied. To test, the developed $T$-matrix formalism has been applied to the calculation of the dipole, quadrupole and octupole polarizabilities of the hydrogen atom.
The false vacua of some potentials do not decay via Euclidean bounces. This typically happens for tunneling actions with a flat direction (in field configuration space) that is lifted by a perturbation into a sloping valley, pushing the bounce off to infinity. Using three different approaches we find a consistent picture for such decays. In the Euclidean approach the bottom of the action valley consists of a family of pseudo-bounces (field configurations with some key good properties of bounces except extremizing the action). The pseudo-bounce result is validated by minimizing a WKB action in Minkowski space along appropriate paths in configuration space. Finally, the simplest approach uses the tunneling action method proposed recently with a simple modification of boundary conditions.
We study the Gribov problem within a Hamiltonian formulation of pure Yang-Mills theory. For a particular gauge fixing, a finite volume modification of the axial gauge, we find an exact characterization of the space of gauge-inequivalent gauge configurations.
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