Gradient effects on false vacuum decay in gauge theory

Understand

We study false vacuum decay for a gauged complex scalar field in a polynomial potential with nearly degenerate minima.

• Radiative corrections to the profile of the nucleated bubble as well as the full decay rate are computed in the planar thin-wall approximation using the effective action.
• This allows to account for the inhomogeneity of the bounce background and the radiative corrections in a self-consistent manner.
• In contrast to scalar or fermion loops, for gauge fields one must deal with a coupled system that mixes the Goldstone boson and the gauge fields, which considerably complicates the numerical calculation of Green's functions.