Related papers: Dynamics of false vacuum bubbles with nonminimal c…
For the first time, we investigate the non-perturbative dynamics of single field inflation with a departure from slow-roll. Using simulations, we find that oscillatory features in the potential can drastically alter the course of inflation,…
We study a new model of scalar field with a general non-minimal kinetic coupling to itself and to the curvature, as a source of dark energy, and analyze the cosmological dynamics of this model and the issue of accelerated expansion. A wide…
In this talk, we discuss the possibility that the vacuum is dynamically determined in the history of the universe. The point is that some of the bubbles with a certain vacuum shrink by the evolution of the universe via gravity and may…
When the vacuum state of a scalar or electromagnetic field is modified by the presence of a reflecting boundary, an interacting test particle undergoes velocity fluctuations. Such effect is regarded as a sort of quantum analog of the…
Nonminimally coupled free scalar fields may be unstable in the spacetime of compact objects. Such instability can be triggered by classical seeds or, more simply, by quantum fluctuations giving rise to the so-called {\em vacuum awakening…
Our universe may have formed via bubble nucleation in an eternally-inflating background. Furthermore, the background may have a compact dimension--the modulus of which tunnels out of a metastable minimum during bubble nucleation--which…
One or two negative mass singularities are found to occur in static inhomogeneous spatially closed solutions to the Einstein equations. The singularities produce a positive Komar mass, and this decreases the size of the cosmological…
The evolution of spherically symmetric unstable scalar field configurations (``bubbles'') is examined for both symmetric (SDWP) and asymmetric (ADWP) double-well potentials. Bubbles with initial static energies $E_0\la E_{{\rm crit}}$,…
Recent Chandra and XMM-Newton observations of galaxy cluster cooling flows have revealed X-ray emission voids of up to 30 kpc in size that have been identified with buoyant, magnetized bubbles. Motivated by these observations, we have…
We study the propagation of bubbles of new vacuum in a radially inhomogeneous background filled with dust or radiation, and including a cosmological constant, as a first step in the analysis of the influence of inhomogeneities in the…
I discuss empty space, as it appears in the physical foundations of relativistic field theories and in the semiclassical study of isolated systems. Of particular interest is the relationship between empirical measurements of the…
We explore a family of generalised scalar-tensor theories that exhibit self-tuning to low scale anti de Sitter vacua, even in the presence of a large cosmological constant. We are able to examine the linearised fluctuations about these…
We consider a scalar field with a kinetic term non-minimally coupled to gravity in an anisotropic background. Various potentials for the scalar field are considered. By explicit examples, we show that how the anisotropy can change the…
We study the continuum limit of the motion of agents in the plane driven by competing short-range repulsion and long-range attractive forces. At a critical parameter value, we find destabilization of a trivial branch of uniformly…
False vacuum decay in field theory may be formulated as a boundary value problem in Euclidean space. In a previous work, we studied its solution in single scalar field theories with quadratic gravity and used it to find obstructions to…
In this letter we study the effects of a noncommutative minisuperspace, including matter degrees of freedom on a FRW universe with cosmological constant. In this setting the vacuum energy density can be calculated to be of the same order as…
We study the possible types of the nucleation of vacuum bubbles. We classify vacuum bubbles in de Sitter background and present some numerical solutions. The thin-wall approximation is employed to obtain the nucleation rate and the radius…
An alternative for the Higgs mechanism is proposed. It predicts the appearance in the broken phase of a scalar background field which may be interpreted as describing an almost uniform (i.e., homogeneous and isotropic) superfluid condensate…
A non-singular bouncing cosmology is generically obtained in loop quantum cosmology due to non-perturbative quantum gravity effects. A similar picture can be achieved in standard general relativity in the presence of a scalar field with a…
In this work we study the imprints of bubble nucleation on primordial inflationary perturbations. We assume that the bubble is formed via the tunneling of a spectator field from the false vacuum of its potential to its true vacuum. We…