Numerical Analysis of Coleman-de Luccia Tunneling

Abstract

We study the false vacuum decay of a single scalar field $\phi$ coupled to gravity described by the Coleman-de Luccia (CdL) instanton. We show that it is possible to numerically calculate the bounce factor, which is related to the CdL tunneling rate, without using the thin-wall approximation. In this paper, we consider $1/\cosh(\phi)$- and $\cos(\phi)$-type potential as examples, which have cosmological and phenomenological applications. Especially, in the $\cos(\phi)$-type potential we show that the range of values in which axion decay constant can take is restricted by the form of the periodic potential if the CdL tunneling occurs.