The $A$ phase and the $B$ phase of superfluid He-3 are well studied, both theoretically and experimentally. The decay time scale of the $A$ phase to the $B$ phase of a typical supercooled superfluid $^3$He-A sample is calculated to be $10^{20,000}$ y
ears or longer, yet the actual first-order phase transition of supercooled $A$ phase happens very rapidly (in seconds to minutes) in the laboratory. We propose that this very fast phase transition puzzle can be explained by the resonant tunneling effect in field theory, which generically happens since the degeneracies of both the $A$ and the $B$ phases are lifted by many small interaction effects. This explanation predicts the existence of peaks in the $A to B$ transition rate for certain values of the temperature, pressure, and magnetic field. Away from these peaks, the transition simply will not happen.
We propose a new way to implement an inflationary prior to a cosmological dataset that incorporates the inflationary observables at arbitrary order. This approach employs an exponential form for the Hubble parameter $H(phi)$ without taking the slow-r
oll approximation. At lowest non-trivial order, this $H(phi)$ has the unique property that it is the solution to the brachistochrone problem for inflation.
The resonant tunneling phenomenon is well understood in quantum mechanics. We argue why a similar phenomenon must be present in quantum field theory. We then use the functional Schrodinger method to show how resonant tunneling through multiple barrie
rs takes place in quantum field theory with a single scalar field. We also show how this phenomenon in scalar quantum field theory can lead to an exponential enhancement of the single-barrier tunneling rate. Our analysis is carried out in the thin-wall approximation.
We study Coleman-de Luccia tunneling in some detail. We show that, for a single scalar field potential with a true and a false vacuum, there are four types of tunneling, depending on the properties of the potential. A general tunneling process involv
es a combination of thermal (Gibbons-Hawking temperature) fluctuation part way up the barrier followed by quantum tunneling. The thin-wall approximation is a special limit of the case (of only quantum tunneling) where inside the nucleation bubble is the true vacuum while the outside reaches the false vacuum. Hawking-Moss tunneling is the (only thermal fluctuation) limit of the case where the inside of the bubble does not reach the true vacuum at the moment of its creation, and the outside is cut off by the de Sitter horizon before it reaches the false vacuum. We estimate the corrections to the Hawking-Moss formula, which can be large. In all cases, we see that the bounce of the Euclidean action decreases rapidly as the vacuum energy density increases, signaling that the tunneling is not exponentially suppressed. In some sense, this phenomenon may be interpreted as a finite temperature effect due to the Gibbons-Hawking temperature of the de Sitter space. As an application, we discuss the implication of this tunneling property to the cosmic landscape.
The Hawking-Moss tunneling rate for a field described by the Dirac-Born-Infeld action is calculated using a stochastic approach. We find that the effect of the non-trivial kinetic term is to enhance the tunneling rate, which can be exponentially sign
ificant. This result should be compared to the DBI enhancement found in the Coleman-de Luccia case.
