Thermal False Vacuum Decay is Not What It Seems

I’ll start with a brief review of the standard theory of false vacuum decay (first-order phase transition) in field theory at high temperature. Then I’ll contrast the predictions of this theory with the results of numerical simulations. The decay rate measured in the simulations happens to deviate significantly from the predicted value. I’ll present evidence that this is not an artefact of simulations, but a physical effect overlooked in the standard theory — violation of thermal equilibrium during the critical bubble nucleation. I’ll discuss a criterion for the system to remain in equilibrium during the nucleation process and show that it is often violated in common theories. For example, thermal equilibrium is expected to break down in any weakly coupled theory, in which all couplings are of the same order.