Joint cosmology seminar at MIT:

Tuesday, December 6, 2016, 2:30 pm
Cosman Seminar Room
Center for Theoretical Physics
Building 6C, Room 6C-442
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Refreshments at 2:00 in the same room

Quantum tunneling in multi-field theories

Ali Masoumi
Tufts

Abstract:

Vacuum decay and cosmological phase transitions play an important role in our understanding of our universe. These phenomena are most important in theories like string theory. Here our understanding of tunneling is very limited due to presence of many fields and also non-canonical kinetic terms. I will explain advances we made in calculating the tunneling rates in theories with many fields in a fast and reliable manner. I will also explain an approximation we invented for the decay rates and show its successes and shortcomings.