English

Fermions and Kaluza-Klein vacuum decay: a toy model

High Energy Physics - Theory 2015-06-05 v2

Abstract

We address the question of whether or not fermions with twisted periodicity condition suppress the semiclassical decay of M^4xS^1 Kaluza--Klein vacuum. We consider a toy (1+1)-dimensional model with twisted fermions in cigar-shaped Euclidean background geometry and calculate the fermion determinant. We find that contrary to expectations, the determinant is finite. We consider this as an indication that twisted fermions do not stabilize the Kaluza--Klein vacuum.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1205.5184,
  title  = {Fermions and Kaluza-Klein vacuum decay: a toy model},
  author = {V. A. Rubakov and M. Yu. Kuznetsov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1205.5184},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

13 pages, 2 figures