One-Loop Corrections to Bubble Nucleation Rate at Finite Temperature

Abstract

We present an evaluation of the 1-loop prefactor in the lifetime of a metastable state which decays at finite temperature by bubble nucleation. Such a state is considered in one-component phi^4 model in three space dimensions. The calculation serves as a prototype application of a fast numerical method for evaluating the functional determinants that appear in semiclassical approximations.

Comments: DO-TH-93/18, 15 pages, 11 Figures available on request, LaTeX, no macros needed