The spontaneous breaking of a metastable string

Abstract

We consider the phase transition of a string with tension ${\text{eps}}_1$ to a string with a smaller tension ${\text{eps}}_2$. The transition proceeds through quantum tunneling, and we calculate in arbitrary number of dimensions the pre-exponential factor multiplying the leading semiclassical exponential expression for the rate of the process. At ${\text{eps}}_2=0$ the found formula for the decay rate also describes a break up of a metastable string into two pieces.

Comments: 16 pages, 3 figures