%0 Journal Article
%T Tunneling decay of false vortices
%A Bum-Hoon Lee
%A Wonwoo Lee
%A Richard MacKenzie
%A M. B. Paranjape
%A U. A. Yajnik
%A Dong-han Yeom
%J Physics
%D 2013
%I arXiv
%R 10.1103/PhysRevD.88.085031
%X We consider the decay of vortices trapped in the false vacuum of a theory of scalar electrodynamics in 2+1 dimensions. The potential is inspired by models with intermediate symmetry breaking to a metastable vacuum that completely breaks a U(1) symmetry, while in the true vacuum the symmetry is unbroken. The false vacuum is unstable through the formation of true vacuum bubbles; however, the rate of decay can be extremely long. On the other hand, the false vacuum can contain metastable vortex solutions. These vortices contain the true vacuum inside in addition to a unit of magnetic flux and the appropriate topologically nontrivial false vacuum outside. We numerically establish the existence of vortex solutions which are classically stable; however, they can decay via tunneling. In general terms, they tunnel to a configuration which is a large, thin-walled vortex configuration that is now classically unstable to the expansion of its radius. We compute an estimate for the tunneling amplitude in the semi-classical approximation. We believe our analysis would be relevant to superconducting thin films or superfluids.
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1308.3501v1