Convexity, gauge-dependence and tunneling rates

Abstract: We clarify issues of convexity, gauge-dependence and radiative corrections in relation to tunneling rates. Despite the gauge dependence of the effective action at zero and finite temperature, it is shown that tunneling and nucleation rates remain independent of the choice of gauge-fixing. Taking as a starting point the functional that defines the transition amplitude from a false vacuum onto itself, it is shown that decay rates are exactly determined by a non-convex, false vacuum effective action evaluated at an extremum. The latter can be viewed as a generalized bounce configuration, and gauge-independence follows from the appropriate Nielsen identities. This holds for any election of gauge-fixing that leads to an invertible Faddeev-Popov matrix.