English

Collapse of simple harmonic universe

High Energy Physics - Theory 2015-05-30 v4 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

In a recent paper Graham et al constructed oscillating and static universe models which are stable with respect to all classical perturbations. Here we show that such universes are quantum-mechanically unstable and can collapse by quantum tunneling to zero radius. We also present instantons describing nucleation of oscillating and static universes from nothing.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1110.4096,
  title  = {Collapse of simple harmonic universe},
  author = {Audrey T. Mithani and Alexander Vilenkin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1110.4096},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

14 pages, 4 figures; v2: Discussion of tunneling from nothing is expanded into a separate section; some references added; v3: Note added; some additional references added; v4: some comments and references added

R2 v1 2026-06-21T19:22:22.074Z