  We revisit the problem of decay of a metastable vacuum induced by the
presence of a particle. For the bosons of the `master field' the problem is
solved in any number of dimensions in terms of the spontaneous decay rate of
the false vacuum, while for a fermion we find a closed expression for the decay
rate in (1+1) dimensions. It is shown that in the (1+1) dimensional case an
infrared problem of one-loop correction to the decay rate of a boson is
resolved due to a cancellation between soft modes of the field. We also find
the boson decay rate in the `sine-Gordon staircase' model in the limits of
strong and weak coupling.
