English

Smooth ``creation'' of an open universe in five dimensions

High Energy Physics - Theory 2007-05-23 v1 Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We present a non-singular instanton describing the creation of an open universe with a compactified extra dimension. The four dimensional section of this solution is a singular instanton of the type introduced by Hawking and Turok. The ``singularity'' is viewed in five dimensions as a smooth bubble of ``nothing'' which eats up a portion of spacetime as it expands. Flat space with a compact extra dimension is shown to be gravitationally metastable, but sufficiently long lived if the size of the extra dimension is large compared with the Planck length.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/9804106,
  title  = {Smooth ``creation'' of an open universe in five dimensions},
  author = {Jaume Garriga},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/9804106},
  year   = {2007}
}

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8 pages