# 2015 CAP Congress / Congrès de l'ACP 2015

13-19 June 2015
University of Alberta
America/Edmonton timezone
Welcome to the 2015 CAP Congress! / Bienvenue au congrès de l'ACP 2015!

## Tunneling decay of false kinks

17 Jun 2015, 19:10
2m
CCIS Ground Floor PCL lounge (University of Alberta)

### CCIS Ground Floor PCL lounge

#### University of Alberta

Poster (Student, In Competition) / Affiche (Étudiant(e), inscrit à la compétition) Theoretical Physics / Physique théorique (DTP-DPT)

### Speaker

Yvan Ung (University of Montreal)

### Description

We consider the decay of “false kinks,'' that is, kinks formed in a scalar field theory with a pair of degenerate symmetry-breaking false vacua in 1+1 dimensions. The true vacuum is symmetric. A second scalar field and a peculiar potential are added in order for the kink to be classically stable. As with any tunneling event, the rate is proportional to $\exp{-S_E}$ where $S_E$ is the Euclidean action of the bounce describing the tunneling event. This factor varies wildly depending on the parameters of the model. Of interest is the fact that, when the parameters take values arbitrarily close to the “zones of dissociation”, that is, regions in parameter space where $S_E$ can get arbitrarily small, implying that the kink is only barely stable. Thus, while the translation-invariant false vacuum may be very long-lived, the presence of kinks can give rise to accelerated vacuum decay.

### Primary author

Yvan Ung (University of Montreal)

### Co-authors

Luc Marleau (Université Laval) Manu Paranjape (Université de Montréal) Richard MacKenzie (U. Montréal) Yan Gobeil (McGill University) Éric Dupuis (University of Montreal)

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