Higgs instantons in the Standard Model

The Standard Model of particle physics predicts that, for the best estimates for the particle masses, the current vacuum state in metastable, and that eventually it will decay into to true negative-energy ground state. This process is described by semiclassical instanton solutions. The aim of this project is to find these instantons in the presence of a cosmological constant and a non-minimal coupling to gravity, and investigate the effects of gravity and quantum corrections. This will give a better understanding of the rate of this process and how it depends on the parameters of the theory, and that way it makes it possible to constrain them.