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Hawking-Moss bounces and vacuum decay rates

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arxiv hep-th/0612146 v2 pith:7DCJZY4J submitted 2006-12-14 hep-th gr-qc

Hawking-Moss bounces and vacuum decay rates

classification hep-th gr-qc
keywords potentialhawking-mossratevacuavacuumanalogousanalyzebarrier
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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The conventional interpretation of the Hawking-Moss (HM) solution implies a transition rate between vacua that depends only on the values of the potential in the initial vacuum and at the top of a potential barrier, leading to the implausible conclusion that transitions to distant vacua can be as likely as those to a nearby one. I analyze this issue using a nongravitational example with analogous properties. I show that such HM bounce do not give reliable rate calculations, but are instead related to the probability of finding a quasistable configuration at a local potential maximum.

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Cited by 3 Pith papers

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