Domain walls and the decay rate of the excited vacua in large N Yang-Mills theory

In the (nonsupersymmetric) Yang-Mills theory in the large N limit, there exists an infinite set of nondegenerate "vacua." The distinct vacua are separated by domain walls whose tension determines the decay rate of the false vacua. I discuss the phenomenon from a field-theoretic point of view, starting from supersymmetric gluodynamics and then breaking supersymmetry by introducing a gluino mass. By combining previously known results, the decay rate of the excited vacua is estimated, Γ∼exp(-const×N⁴). The fourth power of N in the exponent is a consequence of the fact that the wall tension is proportional to N.