Supersymmetry in the false vacuum

Abstract

A metastable state, or a false vacuum, is not an eigenstate of the Hamiltonian in quantum field theory. Its energy density has a non-zero imaginary part equal to its decay width. Therefore, supersymmetry cannot be exact in the false vacuum. We calculate the size of this effect using the path integral approach.

Comments: 9 pages, latex, epsf, one figure appended (uuencoded postscript), complete postscript file is available at ftp://dept.physics.upenn.edu/pub/Kusenko/UPR679T.ps