Generalized escape paths for dynamical tunneling in QFT
Luc Darmé (National Centre for Nuclear Research, ul. Pasteura 7, 02-093 Warsaw, Poland); Joerg Jaeckel (Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Heidelberg, Philosophenweg 16, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany); Marek Lewicki (Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, ul. Pasteura 5, 02-093 Warsaw, Poland, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom,)
We present a formalism based on the functional Schrödinger equation to analyze time-dependent tunneling in quantum field theory at the semiclassical level. The full problem is reduced step by step to a finite dimensional quantum mechanical setup and solved using the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin approximation. As an example, we consider tunneling from a homogeneous oscillating initial state in scalar quantum field theory.
