Abstract

Localised heterogeneities have been recently discovered to act as bubble-nucleation sites in nonlinear field theories. Vacuum decay seeded by black holes is one of the most remarkable applications. This article proposes a simple and exactly solvable ϕ4 model to study bubble evolution about a localised heterogeneity. Bubbles with a rich dynamical behaviour are observed depending on the topological properties of the heterogeneity. The linear stability analysis of soliton-bubbles predicts oscillating bubbles and the insertion of new bubbles inside an expanding precursor bubble. Numerical simulations in 2+1 dimensions are in good agreement with theoretical predictions.