Abstract
We investigate the role played by fast quenching on the decay of metastable (or false vacuum) states. Instead of the exponentially-slow decay rate per unit volume,
Γ
HN
∼exp[−
E
b
/
k
B
T]
(
E
b
is the free energy of the critical bubble), predicted by Homogeneous Nucleation theory, we show that under fast enough quenching the decay rate is a power law
Γ
RN
∼[
E
b
/
k
B
T
]
−B
, where
B
is weakly sensitive to the temperature. For a range of parameters, large-amplitude oscillations about the metastable state trigger the resonant emergence of coherent subcritical configurations. Decay mechanisms for different
E
b
are proposed and illustrated in a (2+1)-dimensional scalar field model.