Evaluation of thermal corrections to false vacuum decay rates.

We examine the computation of the nucleation barrier used in the expression for false vacuum decay rates in finite temperature field theory. By a detailed analysis of the determinantal prefactor, we show that the correct bounce solution used in the computation of the nucleation barrier should not include loop corrections coming from the scalar field undergoing decay. Temperature corrections to the bounce appear from loop contributions from other fields coupled to the scalar field. We compute the nucleation barrier for a model of scalar fields coupled to fermions, and compare our results to the expression commonly used in the literature. We find that, for large enough self-couplings, the inclusion of scalar loops in the expression of the nucleation barrier leads to an underestimate of the decay rate in the neighborhood of the critical temperature. PACS number(s): 98.80.Cq, 64.60.Qb . e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] . ∗On leave from Inst. de F́ısica, Univ. de São Paulo, C.P. 20516, São Paulo, SP 01498, Brazil. 1