Gauge-independence of tunneling rates

It is shown that tunneling rates can be defined in terms of a false-vacuum effective action whose reality and convexity properties differ from those of the corresponding groundstate functional. The tunneling rate is directly related to the false-vacuum effective action evaluated at an extremal “quantum bounce”. The Nielsen identities of the false-vacuum functional ensure that the rate remains independent of the choice of gauge-fixing. Our results are nonperturbative and clarify issues related with convexity and radiative corrections.