English

Pathology in WKB wave function for tunneling assisted by gravity

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2022-11-29 v1

Abstract

There are several exotic tunneling processes that can be realized only by incorporating the effect of gravity. Here, we point out that we encounter difficulties in constructing the WKB wave function, once we try to describe quantum fluctuations around the semi-classical tunneling path. We present examples of pathology in the true vacuum decay/upward tunneling, the false vacuum decay catalyzed by a black hole and the tunneling with black hole/wormhole production.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2211.15555,
  title  = {Pathology in WKB wave function for tunneling assisted by gravity},
  author = {Stefano Ansoldi and Takahiro Tanaka},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.15555},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

20 pages, 7 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T07:15:19.921Z