Goldstone modes in vacuum decay and first-order phase transitions

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Description/Abstract

We introduce effective Hamiltonians for Goldstone modes of the Euclidean group, representing fluctuations in the surface of a critical droplet or in the interface between two phases. The Euclidean invariance is non-linearly realised on the Goldstone fields. The Hamiltonians are non-renormalisable in more than one dimension, showing that the disappearance of a phase transition in one dimension for systems with a discrete symmetry may be interpreted in terms of the infrared instabilities induced by these modes. The existence and form of these Hamiltonians indicates the universality of the essential singularity at a first-order phase transition in models with Euclidean invariance.