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Metastability of (d+n)-dimensional elastic manifolds
We investigate the depinning of a massive elastic manifold with internal
dimensions, embedded in a -dimensional space, and subject to an
isotropic pinning potential The tunneling process is
driven by a small external force We find the zero temperature and
high temperature instantons and show that for the case the
problem exhibits a sharp transition from quantum to classical behavior: At low
temperatures the Euclidean action is constant up to exponentially
small corrections, while for The results are universal and do not depend on the detailed shape
of the trapping potential . Possible applications of the problem to
the depinning of vortices in high- superconductors and nucleation in
-dimensional phase transitions are discussed. In addition, we determine the
high-temperature asymptotics of the preexponential factor for the
-dimensional problem.Comment: RevTeX, 10 pages, 3 figures inserte
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