Quantum-field transition rates at finite temperatures

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Abstract
The Euclidean solutions (instantons) discovered in field theories seem to be interpretable as tunnelings between vacuums with different winding numbers. The associated transition rate for such tunnelings has been estimated. We study the effect of temperature on the transition rate between quantum-field configurations in thermodynamic equilibrium. We do this by extending the "most probable escape path" (MPEP) WKB vacuum-tunneling formalism of Bitar and Chang to finite temperatures. Our approach employs elementary results from quantum statistical mechanics. We believe the method offers an easily calculable approximation for quantum-field transition rates at finite temperatures.