出典:Wiktionary
出典:『Wiktionary』 (2025/09/08 00:48 UTC 版)
false vacuum (plural false vacuums or false vacua)
出典:Wikipedia
出典:『Wikipedia』 (2011/08/01 04:52 UTC 版)
In quantum field theory, a false vacuum is a metastable sector of space that appears to be a perturbative vacuum, but is unstable due to instanton effects that may tunnel to a lower energy state. This tunneling can be caused by quantum fluctuations or the creation of high-energy particles. Simply put, the false vacuum is a local minimum, but not the lowest energy state, even though it may remain stable for some time. This is analogous to metastability for first-order phase transitions.