Late-time Quantum Vacuum Decay and its Cosmological Implications
Abstract
The existence of a landscape of metastable vacua raises the possibility that our Universe may have undergone quantum vacuum decay at late times. This work explores how such a transition can be tested with cosmological observables, focusing on precision distance measurements and cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. A set of phenomenological models is constructed in which late-time quantum tunneling changes the vacuum energy and may convert a subcomponent of dark matter into dark radiation, possibly accompanied by domain-wall production. The resulting expansion histories are compared with DESI DR2 baryon acoustic oscillation data; supernova distance measurements from DES-Dovekie, Pantheon+, and Union3; and a compressed CMB likelihood. For quantum-tunneling models, current cosmological distance measurements still allow a 50% decrease in the total vacuum energy for a transition redshift . The model with dark-matter conversion and domain-wall production provides a good fit to resolve the tension between cosmological observables and the CDM model, with a preferred transition around and about 10% of dark matter participating in the transition. Additionally, CMB anisotropy constraints from bubble nucleation and the associated domain-wall network are derived and shown to strongly restrict slow or sparse late transitions. Applied to the minimal quantum-tunneling model, these constraints allow an decrease in the total vacuum energy for a transition redshift of order unity. For nonminimal models, dark-matter-density-dependent tunneling can proceed rapidly enough to evade such bounds. These results demonstrate that late-time quantum vacuum decay is a testable cosmological phenomenon and provide a concrete observational handle on metastable-vacuum physics motivated by landscape scenarios.
Comments: 43 pages, 10 figures, 5 tables
Cite
@article{arxiv.2605.30259,
title = {Late-time Quantum Vacuum Decay and its Cosmological Implications},
author = {Yang Bai and Sida Lu and Nicholas Orlofsky},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.30259},
year = {2026}
}