Decay of metastable states: Sharp transition from quantum to classical behavior

The decay rate of metastable states is determined at high temperatures by thermal activation, whereas at temperatures close to zero, quantum tunneling is relevant. At some temperature T-c the transition from classical to quantum-dominated decay occurs. The transition can be first-order-like, with a discontinuous first derivative of the Euclidean action, or smooth with only a second derivative developing a jump. In the former case the crossover temperature T-c cannot be calculated perturbatively and must be found as the intersection point of the Euclidean actions calculated at low and high temperatures. In this paper we present a sufficient criterion for a first-order transition in tunneling problems and apply it to the problem of the tunneling of strings. It is shown that the problem of the depinning of a massive string from a linear defect in the presence of an arbitrarily strong dissipation exhibits a first-order transition.