Gravitational effects on and of vacuum decay

Abstract

It is possible for a classical field theory to have two stable homogeneous ground states, only one of which is an absolute energy minimum. In the quantum version of the theory, the ground state of higher energy is a false vacuum, rendered unstable by barrier penetration. There exists a well-established semiclassical theory of the decay of such false vacuums. In this paper, we extend this theory to include the effects of gravitation. Contrary to naive expectation, these are not always negligible, and may sometimes be of critical importance, especially in the late stages of the decay process.

The intermediate scale branch of the landscape

“…The typical non-supersymmetric state with small, positive cosmological constant is surrounded (in the lattice of fluxes) by other states, presumably roughly half of which typically have negative cosmological constant. The standard Coleman-DeLuccia analysis [16] would lead us to expect that to some of these states the decay amplitude vanishes, while to others there is a decay to an open universe which experiences a big crunch. In the absence of small parameters, one might guess that a typical state with small cosmological constant and badly broken symmetry could decay to 50% of its neighbors.…”

Tunneling and the Emergent Universe scheme in a JBD Theory

“…The calculation of the decay of the false vacuum was solved by Coleman and Callan [23,24] and the incorporation of gravitational effects was studied by Coleman and De Luccia [25]. However, the latter analysis is not applicable here because of the non-standard gravitational action.…”

Metastable vacua in brane worlds

“…Indeed, Coleman and de Luccia showed [2] in the 4d context that gravitational effects are negligible only in the case (3.24) where Λ 0 is the radius such that the bubble radius equals the Schwarzchild radius. For the 4d version of our model it equals Λ 0 = (16G N bv/3) −1/2 , where G N = 1/M 2 P is the 4d Newton constant.…”

“…The fate of metastable vacua in field theory [1,2] is of great interest in cosmology and particle physics. The dynamics of their quantum decay toward the true vacuum rely on the knowledge of the classical Euclidean "bounce" solution.…”