Gauge-independence of tunneling rates
Abstract
It is shown that tunneling rates can be defined in terms of a false-vacuum effective action whose reality and convexity properties differ from those of the corresponding groundstate functional. The tunneling rate is directly related to the false-vacuum effective action evaluated at an extremal "quantum bounce". The Nielsen identities of the false-vacuum functional ensure that the rate remains independent of the choice of gauge-fixing. Our results are nonperturbative and clarify issues related with convexity and radiative corrections.
- Publication:
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arXiv e-prints
- Pub Date:
- November 2016
- DOI:
- 10.48550/arXiv.1611.07557
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1611.07557
- Bibcode:
- 2016arXiv161107557P
- Keywords:
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- High Energy Physics - Theory;
- High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
- E-Print:
- 6 pages. Contribution to the Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on High Energy Physics, ICHEP 2016, Chicago, IL, USA