Spontaneous and Induced Decay of Metastable Strings and Domain Walls

Understand

We consider decay of metastable topological configurations such as strings and domain walls.

• The transition from a state with higher energy density to a state with lower one proceeds through quantum tunneling or through thermally catalyzed quantum tunneling (at sufficiently small temperatures).
• The transition rate is calculated at zero temperature including the preexponential factor and also at a finite low temperature.
• The thermal catalysis factor is closely related to the probability (effective length) of destruction of the string (the domain wall) in collisions of the Goldstone bosons, corresponding to transverse waves on the string (wall).