Related papers: Infrared Sensitivity of Unstable Vacua
The role of memory time fluctuations for instabilities in random media is considered. It is shown that fluctuations can result in infinitely fast growth of statistical moments. The effect is demonstrated in the framework of light…
We discuss the possible appearance of several rather exotic phenomena in quantum gravity, including UV/IR mixing, novel modifications of infrared phenomenology that extend effective field theory approaches, and the relaxation of the usual…
One of the most disturbing difficulties in thinking about the cosmological constant is that it is not stable under radiative corrections. The feedback mechanism proposed in [hep-th/0306108] is a dynamical way to protect a zero or small…
An effective local quantum field theory with UV and IR cutoffs correlated in accordance with holographic entropy bounds is capable of rendering the cosmological constant (CC) stable against quantum corrections. By setting an IR cutoff to…
A mechanism for suppressing the cosmological constant is developed, based on an analogy with a superconducting phaseshift in which free fermions coupled perturbatively to a weak gravitational field are in an unstable false vacuum state. The…
Shocks in granular media, such as vertically oscillated beds, have been shown to develop instabilities. Similar jet formation has been observed in explosively dispersed granular media. Our previous work addressed this instability by…
The stability of matter composed of electrons and static nuclei is investigated for a relativistic dynamics for the electrons given by a suitably projected Dirac operator and with Coulomb interactions. In addition there is an arbitrary…
Quantum theory, general relativity, the standard model of particle physics, and the $\Lambda$CDM model of cosmology have all been spectacularly successful within their respective regimes of applicability, but many central problems remain…
We argue that in the context of string theory a large number N of connected degenerate vacua that mix will lead to a ground state with much lower energy, essentially because of the standard level repulsion of quantum theory for the…
Colloidal particles are often seen as big atoms that can be directly observed in real space. They are therefore playing an increasingly important role as model systems to study processes of interest in condensed matter physics such as…
It is believed that gravity will be explained in the framework of the existing quantum theory when one succeeds in eliminating divergencies at large momenta or small distances (although the phenomenon of gravity has been observed only at…
The energy density of the vacuum, Lambda, is at least 60 orders of magnitude smaller than several known contributions to it. Approaches to this problem are tightly constrained by data ranging from elementary observations to precision…
We consider a large class of nonlinear diffusive systems with nonlocal coupling. By using a non-perturbative analytical approach we are able to determine the convective and absolute instabilities of all the uniform states of these systems.…
We discuss the Freund-Rubin compactification with cosmological constant and the dilaton field, and examine the stability of the spacetimes at the low energy. The Minkowski or de Sitter spacetime can be obtained if the dilation field is…
A diverse set of observations now compellingly suggest that Universe possesses a nonzero cosmological constant. In the context of quantum-field theory a cosmological constant corresponds to the energy density of the vacuum, and the wanted…
We conjecture that all vacua in string theory decay. More precisely, non-supersymmetric vacua in string theory are at most metastable and eventually decay, while supersymmetric vacua are only marginally stable. All de Sitter vacua with…
Stable ring solutions supported by the angular momentum caused by superconducting charge and current have been suggested to exist in the gauged $U(1)\times U(1)$ field theory. We construct potentially cosmologically relevant solutions using…
We study the complete moduli space of vacua of 3d $\mathcal{N}=4$ $U(N)$ SQCD theories with $N_f$ fundamentals, building on the algebraic description of the Coulomb branch, and deduce the low energy physics in any vacuum from the local…
I discuss how anomalies affect classical symmetries and how, in turn, the non-trivial nature of the gauge theory vacuum makes these quantum corrections troublesome. Although no solution seems in sight for the cosmological constant problem,…
The failure to calculate the vacuum energy is a central problem in theoretical physics. Presumably the problem arises from the insistent use of effective field theory reasoning in a context that is well beyond its intended scope. If one…