Bubbling the False Vacuum Away

Understand

We investigate the role of nonperturbative, bubble-like inhomogeneities on the decay rate of false-vacuum states in two and three-dimensional scalar field theories.

• The inhomogeneities are induced by setting up large-amplitude oscillations of the field about the false vacuum as, for example, after a rapid quench or in certain models of cosmological inflation.
• We show that, for a wide range of parameters, the presence of large-amplitude bubble-like inhomogeneities greatly accelerates the decay rate, changing it from the well-known exponential suppression of homogeneous nucleation to a power-law suppression.
• It is argued that this fast, power-law vacuum decay -- known as resonant nucleation -- is promoted by the presence of long-lived oscillons among the nonperturbative fluctuations about the false vacuum.