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Title: Vacua on the Brink of Decay

Journal Article · · Reviews in Mathematical Physics
 [1];  [2];  [3]
  1. Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, Amsterdam, 1098 XH, The Netherlands
  2. Joseph Henry Laboratories, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
  3. Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
+ Show Author Affiliations

Not provided.

Research Organization:
Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
DOE Contract Number:
SC0007870
OSTI ID:
1541765
Journal Information:
Reviews in Mathematical Physics, Vol. 30, Issue 07; ISSN 0129-055X
Publisher:
World Scientific
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (18)

General Relativity book January 1984
On Gauge Invariance and Vacuum Polarization journal June 1951
Quantized Fields and Particle Creation in Expanding Universes. I journal July 1969
Particle creation by black holes journal August 1975
Cosmological event horizons, thermodynamics, and particle creation journal May 1977
Infrared instability of the vacuum state of gauge theories and asymptotic freedom journal November 1977
An unstable Yang-Mills field mode journal November 1978
De Sitter space and eternity journal July 2008
Universality and scaling in gravitational collapse of a massless scalar field journal January 1993
Critical Schwinger pair production. II. Universality in the deeply critical regime journal January 2017
Infrared sensitivity of unstable vacua journal August 2011
Inverse problem of quantum scattering theory. II. journal March 1976
The river model of black holes journal June 2008
On de Sitter Radiation via Quantum Tunneling journal August 2009
Particle decay in de sitter spacetime via quantum tunneling journal September 2009
Vacuum decay in CFT and the Riemann–Hilbert problem journal June 2016
Universality and scaling at the onset of quantum black hole formation journal March 1994
Hawking Radiation As Tunneling journal December 2000

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Most theoretical approaches used in nuclear astrophysics to model the nucleosynthesis of heavy elements incorporate the so-called statistical model in order to describe the excitation and decay properties of atomic nuclei. One of the basic assumptions of this model is the validity of the Brink–Axel hypothesis and the related concept of so-called photon strength functions to describe γ-ray transition probabilities. We present a novel experimental approach that allows for the first time to experimentally determine the photon strength function simultaneously in two independent ways by a unique combination of quasi-monochromatic photon beams and a newly implemented γ–γ coincidence setup. This technique does not assume a priori the validity of the Brink–Axel hypothesis and sets a benchmark in terms of the detection sensitivity for measuring decay properties of photo-excited states below the neutron separation energy. The data for the spherical off-shell nucleus 128Te were obtained for γ-ray beam-energy settings between 3 MeV and 9 MeV in steps of 130 keV for the lower beam energies and in steps of up to 280 keV for the highest beam settings. We present a quantitative analysis on the consistency of the derived photon strength function with the Brink–Axel hypothesis. The data clearly demonstrate a discrepancy of up to a factor of two between the photon strength functions extracted from the photoabsorption and photon emission process, respectively. In addition, we observe that the photon strength functions are not independent of the excitation energy, as usually assumed. Thus, we conclude, that the Brink–Axel hypothesis is not strictly fulfilled in the excitation-energy region below the neutron separation threshold (Sn = 8.78 MeV) for the studied case of 128Te.
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Related Subjects

Physics