One of
the most concrete implications of the discovery of the Higgs boson is
that, in the absence of physics beyond the standard model, the long term
fate of our universe can now be established through precision
calculations. Are we in a metastable minimum of the Higgs potential or
the true minimum? If we are in a metastable vacuum, what is its
lifetime? To answer these questions, we need to understand tunneling in
quantum field theory.
This
talk will give an overview of the interesting history of tunneling rate
calculations and all of its complications in calculating functional
determinants of fluctuations around the bounce solutions. Several
problems have persisted for the last four decades, and we present new
solutions to these problems that enabled us to calculate exact
closed-form expressions of the functional determinant. Applied to the
standard model, we then get the first-ever complete calculation of the
lifetime of our universe.