Influence of nontrivial backgrounds and decoherence on vacuum decay

Abstract

We present new solutions of vacuum decay in non-Minkowski spacetimes. On a de Sitter background, the tunneling between vacuum states with a nonvanishing energy difference has been considered, whereas in the special case of degenerate vacua we extended the treatment to a power-law FRW-universe. Additionally, we dicuss the vacuum decay in static spacetimes. In the case of Minkowski spacetime, we include interaction with an environmental field and analyze the effects of decoherence and the quantum-to-classical transition of the nucleating bubble.