Vacuum decay actions from tunneling potentials for general spacetime dimension

Abstract

The tunneling potential method to calculate the action for vacuum decay is an alternative to the Euclidean bounce method that has a number of attractive features. In this paper we extend the formalism to general spacetime dimension d > 2 and use it to give simple proofs of several results. For Minkowski or Anti de Sitter false vacua, we show that gravity or higher barriers increase vacuum lifetime and describe a very clean picture of gravitational quenching of vacuum decay. We also derive the thin-wall limit of the action, show how detailed balance for dS to dS transitions works in the new formalism and how to obtain potentials for which the vacuum decay solution can be obtained analytically.