No Arabic abstract
The Krylov-Fock expression of non-decay (or survival) probability, which allows to evaluate the deviations from the exponential decay law (nowadays well established experimentally), is more informative as it readily provides the distribution function for the lifetime as a random quantity. Guided by the well established formalism for describing nuclear alpha decay, we use this distribution function to figure out the mean value of lifetime and its fluctuation rate. This theoretical framework is of considerable interest inasmuch as it allows an experimental verification. Next, we apply the Krylov-Fock approach to the decay of a metastable state at a finite temperature in the framework of thermo-field dynamics. In contrast to the existing formalism, this approach shows the interference effect between the tunnelings from different metastable states as well as between the tunneling and the barrier hopping. This effect looks quite natural in the framework of consistent quantum mechanical description as a manifestation of the double-slit experiment. In the end we discuss the field theory applications of the results obtained.
We propose a simple non-perturbative formalism for false vacuum decay using functional methods. We introduce the quasi-stationary effective action, a bounce action that non-perturbatively incorporates radiative corrections and is robust to strong couplings. The quasi-stationary effective action obeys an exact flow equation in a modified functional renormalization group with a motivated regulator functional. We demonstrate the use of this formalism in a simple toy model and compare our result with that obtained in perturbation theory.
We design and implement a quantum laboratory to experimentally observe and study dynamical processes of quantum field theories. Our approach encodes the field theory as an Ising model, which is then solved by a quantum annealer. As a proof-of-concept, we encode a scalar field theory and measure the probability for it to tunnel from the false to the true vacuum for various tunnelling times, vacuum displacements and potential profiles. The results are in accord with those predicted theoretically, showing that a quantum annealer is a genuine quantum system that can be used as a quantum laboratory. This is the first time it has been possible to experimentally measure instanton processes in a freely chosen quantum field theory. This novel and flexible method to study the dynamics of quantum systems can be applied to any field theory of interest. Experimental measurements of the dynamical behaviour of field theories are independent of theoretical calculations and can be used to infer their properties without being limited by the availability of suitable perturbative or nonperturbative computational methods. In the near future, measurements in such a quantum laboratory could therefore be used to improve theoretical and computational methods conceptually and may enable the measurement and detailed study of previously unobserved quantum phenomena.
Motivated by cosmological examples we study quantum field theoretical tunnelling from an initial state where the classical field, i.e. the vacuum expectation value of the field operator is spatially homogeneous but performing a time-dependent oscillation about a local minimum. In particular we estimate both analytically and numerically the exponential contribution to the tunnelling probability. We additionally show that after the tunnelling event, the classical field solution - the so-called bubble - mediating the phase transition can either grow or collapse. We present a simple analytical criterium to distinguish between the two behaviours.
As the vacuum state of a quantum field is not an eigenstate of the Hamiltonian density, the vacuum energy density can be represented as a random variable. We present an analytical calculation of the probability distribution of the vacuum energy density for real and complex massless scalar fields in Minkowski space. The obtained probability distributions are broad and the vacuum expectation value of the Hamiltonian density is not fully representative of the vacuum energy density.
The decay rate of a false vacuum is studied in gauge theory, paying particular attention to its gauge invariance. Although the decay rate should not depend on the gauge parameter $xi$ according to the Nielsen identity, the gauge invariance of the result of a perturbative calculation has not been clearly shown. We give a prescription to perform a one-loop calculation of the decay rate, with which a manifestly gauge-invariant expression of the decay rate is obtained. We also discuss the renormalization necessary to make the result finite, and show that the decay rate is independent of the gauge parameter even after the renormalization.