Related papers: Minkowski vacua can be metastable
We perform a dynamical system analysis of a cosmological model with linear dependence between the vacuum density and the Hubble parameter, with constant-rate creation of dark matter. We show that the de Sitter spacetime is an asymptotically…
We study tunneling between vacua in multi-dimensional field spaces. Working in the strict thin wall approximation, we find that the conventional instantons for false vacuum decay develop a new vanishing eigenvalue in their fluctuation…
The liquid-vapor transition is a classic example of a discontinuous (first-order) phase transition. Such transitions underlie many phenomena in cosmology, nuclear and particle physics, and condensed-matter physics. They give rise to…
We consider the decay of vortices trapped in the false vacuum of a theory of scalar electrodynamics in 2+1 dimensions. The potential is inspired by models with intermediate symmetry breaking to a metastable vacuum that completely breaks a…
In the standard procedure for calculating the decay rate of a metastable vacuum the solution of the classical Euclidean equation of motion of the background field is needed. On the other hand radiative corrections have to be taken into…
The $q$-theory approach to the cosmological constant problem is reconsidered. The new observation is that the effective classical $q$-theory gets modified due to the backreaction of quantum-mechanical particle production by spacetime…
The nonlinear stability of Minkowski spacetime has been one of the central achievements in the mathematical theory of general relativity and, more broadly, in the analysis of nonlinear geometric wave equations. Since the seminal work of…
The false vacuum is a metastable state that can occur in quantum field theory, and its decay was first studied semi-classically by Coleman. In this work we consider the 1+1 dimensional $\varphi^4$ theory, which is the simplest model that…
The Einstein static universe has played a central role in a number of emergent scenarios recently put forward to deal with the singular origin of the standard cosmological model. Here we study the existence and stability of the Einstein…
In this contribution we review the ideas and results presented in the articles arXiv:2002.01764 and arXiv:2110.08276 where the decay of AdS vacua into bubbles of nothing is studied. We firstly consider AdS vacua in General Relativity with a…
The standard model of elementary particle physics and the theory of general relativity can be extended by the introduction of a vacuum variable which is responsible for the near vanishing of the present cosmological constant (vacuum energy…
Motivated by the discovery of a plenitude of metastable vacua in a string landscape and the possibility of rapid tunneling between these vacua, we revisit the dynamics of a false vacuum bubble in a background de Sitter spacetime. We find…
We consider a gauge theory on the 5-d $\kappa$-Minkowski which can be viewed as the noncommutative analog of a $U(1)$ gauge theory. We show that the Hermiticity condition obeyed by the gauge potential $A_\mu$ is necessarily twisted.…
The Standard Model electroweak vacuum has been found to be metastable, with the true stable vacuum given by a large, phenomenologically unacceptable vacuum expectation value $\approx M_{P}$. Moreover, it may be unstable in an inflationary…
Metastable `false' vacuum states are an important feature of the Standard Model of particle physics and many theories beyond it. Describing the dynamics of a phase transition out of a false vacuum via the nucleation of bubbles is essential…
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…
The fundamental vacuum state of quantum fields, related to Minkowski space, produces divergent fluctuations that must be suppressed in order to bring reality to the description of physical systems. As a consequence, negative vacuum…
We revisit the box Minkowski model [Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 221101 (2012)] and provide a strong argument that, subject to the Dirichlet boundary condition, it is unstable toward black hole formation for arbitrarily small generic…
We investigate the possibility of false vacuum decay in $N=1$ supergravity theories. By establishing a Bogomol'nyi bound for the energy density stored in the domain wall of the $O(4)$ invariant bubble, we show that supersymmetric vacua…
False vacuum decay in quantum mechanical first order phase transitions is a phenomenon with wide implications in cosmology, and presents interesting theoretical challenges. In the standard approach, it is assumed that false vacuum decay…