Related papers: Small Steps and Giant Leaps in the Landscape
Interacting massive fields with m > d H/2 in d+1 dimensional de Sitter space are fundamentally unstable. Scalar fields in this mass range can decay to themselves. This process (which is kinematically forbidden in Minkowski space) can lead…
There has recently been considerable interest in the question whether and under which conditions accelerated cosmological expansion can arise in the asymptotic regions of field space of a $d$-dimensional EFT. We conjecture that such…
Transition of the ground state of a classical $\Phi^4$ theory in 2+1 dimensions is studied from a metastable state into the stable equilibrium. The transition occurs in the broken $Z_2$ symmetry phase and is triggered by a vanishingly small…
KKLT give a mechanism to generate de Sitter vacua in string theory. And recently, the scenario, {\em landscape}, is suggested to explain the problem of the cosmological constant. In this scenario, the cosmological constant is a de Sitter…
We investigate the cosmological signatures of instantons mediating tunneling between de Sitter minima. For generic potentials the Coleman-de Luccia instanton does not necessarily exist; when it does not, the instanton which contributes to…
We consider vacuum decay in the presence of a non-minimal coupling to gravity. We extend the usual thin-wall solution to include the non-minimal coupling. We also perform a full numerical study and discuss the validity of the new thin-wall…
Large-scale bulk peculiar motions introduce a characteristic length scale, inside which the local kinematics are dominated by peculiar-velocity perturbations rather than by the background Hubble expansion. Regions smaller than the…
In this essay we propose that the theory of gravity's vacuum is described by a de Sitter geometry. Under this assumption we consider an adjustment mechanism able to screen any value of the vacuum energy of the matter fields. We discuss the…
We treat the effects of quantum field fluctuations on the decay of a meta-stable state of a self-coupled scalar field. We consider two varieties of field fluctuations and their potential effects in a semiclassical description. The first are…
In this scenario, a generic meta-stable deSitter vacuum site in the cosmic landscape in string theory has a very short lifetime. Typically, the smaller is the vacuum energy of a meta-stable site, the longer is its lifetime. This view of the…
Decaying vacuum cosmological models evolving smoothly between two extreme (very early and late time) de Sitter phases are capable to solve or at least to alleviate some cosmological puzzles, among them: (i) the singularity, (ii) horizon,…
We investigate the possible existence of (meta-)stable de Sitter vacua within N=1 compactifications with generalised fluxes. With the aid of an algorithm inspired by the method of differential evolution, we were able to find three novel…
We present a theory with axion flux monodromies coupled to gravity, that reduces to the local vacuum energy sequester below the axion mass scales. If the axion potentials include a term generated by nonperturbative couplings to gauge…
Under the assumption that the cosmological constant vanishes in the true ground state with lowest possible energy density, we argue that the observed small but finite vacuum-like energy density can be explained if we consider a theory with…
We present a new model of dark energy which could explain the observed accelerated expansion of our Universe. We show that a five-dimensional Einstein-Yang-Mills theory defined in a flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe compactified on a…
We attempt an estimate for the distribution of the tensor mode fraction $r$ over the landscape of vacua in string theory. The dynamics of eternal inflation and quantum tunneling lead to a kind of democracy on the landscape, providing no…
We analyze the renormalization properties of quantum field theories in de Sitter space and show that only two of the maximally invariant vacuum states of free fields lead to consistent perturbation expansions. One is the Euclidean vacuum,…
I discuss conceptual issues associated with the presence of metastable AdS vacua in the string landscape. The geometry of the decay from one AdS to another is presented in detail, and various subtleties that are not present for flat or dS…
The entire classical cosmological history between two extreme de Sitter vacuum solutions is discussed based on Einstein's equations and non-equilibrium thermodynamics. The initial non-singular de Sitter state is characterised by a very high…
Motivated by the early discovery of the gigantic landscape of string theory vacua, in recent years people switched direction to try to find constraints on low energy effective field theories from UV-complete descriptions for example quantum…