Speaker
Description
False vacuum decay (FVD) plays a central role in early-Universe cosmology, with implications for inflationary dynamics, baryogenesis, and Higgs stability. While this type of first-order phase transition is traditionally described using Euclidean instanton methods, the recent development of semiclassical lattice simulations has enabled us to model the decay process in real time.
In this talk, I will present a detailed characterization of FVD observables in real-time simulations of a relativistic scalar field. The field profile at the time of nucleation, in particular, encodes crucial information on the nature of the observed decay channel and on the impact of renormalization effects. We find that ensemble-averaged bubble profiles and decay rates extracted from our simulations are accurately described by instanton solutions in an appropriately renormalized effective potential, thereby resolving a long-standing discrepancy between Euclidean and real-time formalisms.
Our results provide a quantitative foundation for connecting instanton and lattice frameworks to physical observables, and are particularly timely in light of current efforts to realize FVD in cold-atom analogue experiments. I will conclude by outlining prospects for using such platforms to probe non-perturbative aspects of early-Universe phase transitions.