False vacuum decay in kink scattering

A bstract In this work we consider kink-antikink and antikink-kink collisions in a modified ϕ 4 model with a false vacuum characterized by a dimensionless parameter ϵ. The usual ϕ 4 model is recovered for ϵ = 0. We investigate the ϵ ≪ 1 regime where the kink in the presence of false vacuum can be understood as a small deformation of the standard kink for the ϕ 4 model. We show that the attractive interaction between the kink-antikink pair leads to a rich scattering pattern, in some cases delaying considerably the false vacuum decay.