Thermal false vacuum decay in (1+1)-dimensions: Evidence for non-equilibrium dynamics

We numerically study the evolution of a classical real scalar field in ${(1+1)}$ dimensions with initial conditions describing thermal fluctuations around a metastable vacuum. We track false vacuum decay in real time and compare several observables to the predictions of the standard Euclidean formalism. We find agreement for the shape of the critical bubble and the exponential suppression of the decay rate. However, the decay rate prefactor is almost an order of magnitude lower than the predicted value. We argue that this signals a breakdown of thermal equilibrium during the bubble nucleation. In addition, the inefficient thermalization in the system biases the properties of the statistical ensemble and leads to further decrease of the decay rate with time. We substantiate our interpretation with a suite of stochastic field simulations with controlled thermalization time. Varying this time we find that the predictions of the standard equilibrium formalism are recovered when it is sufficiently short. We propose an upper bound on the thermalization time that must be satisfied in order to ensure the applicability of the Euclidean rate calculation. We discuss that this bound is unavoidably violated in common single-field models, irrespective of the number of spacetime dimensions, implying that deviations from equilibrium in these models cannot be neglected. In theories with multiple fields, the bound may or may not hold, depending on the setup details. We investigate one more signature of non-equilibrium dynamics -- coherent oscillonic precursors to the critical bubble nucleation. We show that they get suppressed in the stochastic dynamical simulations when the thermalization time is reduced.