Eyring--Kramers law for the hyperbolic $\phi^4$ model

Abstract

We study the expected transition frequency between the two metastable states of a stochastic wave equation with double-well potential. By transition state theory, the frequency factorizes into two components: one depends only on the invariant measure, given by the $\phi^4_d$ quantum field theory, and the other takes the dynamics into account. We compute the first component with the variational approach to stochastic quantization when $d = 2, 3$. For the two-dimensional equation with random data but no stochastic forcing, we also compute the transmission coefficient.