Decay of Metastable Topological Defects

Alexander Vilenkin; John Preskill

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Decay of Metastable Topological Defects

John Preskill, Alexander Vilenkin

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology · Submitted 3 Sep 1992

abstract compiled · 2026-09-23 · no language-model review

The authors' main claim The decay rate for a global string, vortex, domain wall, or kink is typically suppressed compared to the decay rate for its gauged counterpart.

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What the abstract itself states, as probabilities: claims first 0.02 · states limitation 0.12 · human participants 0.01 · controlled comparison 0.24 · randomized assignment 0.01 · states quantitative result 0.09 · compares with prior results 0.34 · mentions code or data availability 0.01.

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We systematically analyze the decay of metastable topological defects that arise from the spontaneous breakdown of gauge or global symmetries. Quantum-mechanical tunneling rates are estimated for a variety of decay processes. The decay rate for a global string, vortex, domain wall, or kink is typically suppressed compared to the decay rate for its gauged counterpart. We also discuss the decay of global texture, and of semilocal and electroweak strings.

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#	sentence	role	the authors' own work	states the main conclusion	strength
s0	We systematically analyze the decay of metastable topological defects that arise from the spontaneous breakdown of gauge or global symmetries.	contribution 1.00	0.91	0.08	asserted 0.92
s1	Quantum-mechanical tunneling rates are estimated for a variety of decay processes.	method 0.62	0.88	0.06	asserted 0.95
s2	The decay rate for a global string, vortex, domain wall, or kink is typically suppressed compared to the decay rate for its gauged counterpart.	result 1.00	0.68	0.66	asserted 0.87
s3	We also discuss the decay of global texture, and of semilocal and electroweak strings.	contribution 1.00	0.68	0.05	asserted 0.62

What kind of paper the classifier reports this is: theoretical result 0.96 · evidence from proof or derivation 0.81.

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The paper

Original abstract

We systematically analyze the decay of metastable topological defects that arise from the spontaneous breakdown of gauge or global symmetries. Quantum-mechanical tunneling rates are estimated for a variety of decay processes. The decay rate for a global string, vortex, domain wall, or kink is typically suppressed compared to the decay rate for its gauged counterpart. We also discuss the decay of global texture, and of semilocal and electroweak strings.

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References

Forward citations

Cited by 21 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

The decay rate of metastable cosmic strings beyond the thin-string approximation
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LISA can reconstruct metastable cosmic-string tension and lifetime when it samples the tail-to-plateau transition, with residual κ_CS sensitivity possible even in high-SNR plateau-like spectra.

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This paper derives, for the first time, the scalar-induced gravitational wave background sourced by domain wall perturbations, finding a resonant peak at the wall annihilation scale and a k^-16 high-frequency tail.
Gravitational Waves from Metastable Cosmic Strings in Supersymmetric New Inflation Model
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A supersymmetric new inflation model with a two-step SU(2) to U(1) to nothing symmetry breaking yields metastable cosmic strings with GUT-scale tension, able to match the PTA signal while evading LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA cons...
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How the literature uses it

60 arXiv papers cite this in 105 sentences

Each citing sentence is taken from the citing paper's LaTeX source and typed by Pith's classifier. A label appears at probability 0.8 or more (0.95 for support), a contest at 0.7 or more; the quoted words are the citing authors'. How each label was checked · JSON

Papers citing it · 73 sentences without a confident label

Contests it 1 paper

This point was missed in the literature [ref] in which the vortex tension was assumed to be logarithmically divergent even when the vortex is attached by a soliton.

Quantum nucleation of topological solitons · Asymptotic behavior of the scalar field of a vortex attached by a soliton · contest 0.87

Uses its method or tool 3 papers

Here we model this scenario following Refs. [ref] .

Gravitational waves from metastable cosmic strings in the delayed scaling scenario · Metastable cosmic strings · 0.97
More precisely, the tunneling rate per unit string length can be estimated from the bounce action formalism [ref] and is found to be [ref] [equation]

Gravitational Wave Gastronomy · Monopoles Eating Strings · 0.83
where the tunneling rate per unit string length can be estimated from the bounce action formalism [ref] and is exponentially suppressed by powers of the ratio of the symmetry breaking scales [ref] [equation] with $κ_m = m^2/μ$.

Using gravitational waves to see the first second of the Universe · Hybrid defects · 0.87

Uses its data or values 1 paper

Indeed, LVK has given merely the upper bound on the string tension at 25 Hz as [ref] [equation] Second, since the symmetry breaking scales for strings and monopoles are relatively close [ref] , the symmetry breaking with monopole production would also have occurred in the thermal history of the Universe.

Gravitational waves from metastable cosmic strings in the delayed scaling scenario · Delayed scaling scenario · 0.92

Cites it as background 25 papers

Here, we briefly review the conventional estimate of the string breaking rate in the infinitely thin cosmic string limit [ref] .

The decay rate of metastable cosmic strings beyond the thin-string approximation · Breaking of infinitely thin strings · 0.92
Preskill and Vilenkin studied quantum decays of metastable topological defects [ref] (see Ref. [ref] as a review, and Refs. [ref] for recent studies).

Quantum nucleation of topological solitons · Introduction · 0.95
We recall that at zero temperature, the tunnelling rate is obtained from the well-known bounce action calculation on the Euclidean string worldsheet (see, e.g., [ref] ).

Metastable cosmic strings are broken at the start · String breaking at finite temperature · 0.88

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