A new approach to vacuum decay in quantum field theory, based on a simple variational formulation in field space using a tunneling potential, is ideally suited to study the effects of gravity on such decays. The method allows to prove in new and simple ways many results, among others, that gravitational corrections tend to make Minkowski or Anti de Sitter false vacua more stable semiclassically or that higher barriers increase vacuum lifetime. The approach also offers a very clean picture of gravitational quenching of vacuum decay and its parametric dependence on the features of a potential and allows to study the BPS domain-walls between vacua in critical cases. Special attention is devoted to supersymmetric potentials and to the discussion of near-critical vacuum decays, for which it is shown how the new method can be usefully applied beyond the thin-wall approximation.

中文翻译：

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重力的稳定作用变得简单

量子场论中真空衰变的一种新方法，基于场空间中使用隧穿势的简单变分公式，非常适合研究重力对这种衰变的影响。该方法允许以新的和简单的方式证明许多结果，除其他外，重力校正倾向于使 Minkowski 或 Anti de Sitter 假真空在半经典上更稳定，或者更高的势垒会增加真空寿命。该方法还提供了真空衰变的引力猝灭及其对电位特征的参数依赖性的非常清晰的图片，并允许研究关键情况下真空之间的 BPS 畴壁。特别关注超对称势和近临界真空衰变的讨论，