Related papers: Cosmology with a decaying vacuum
The decay of a bound state weakly-coupled to a non-Hermitian tight-binding unstable continuum, i.e. a continuum of states comprising energies with positive imaginary part, is theoretically investigated. As compared to quantum decay in an…
We suggest a technique that explicitly accounts for the structure of an initial state of quantum field in the semiclassical calculations of path integral in curved space-time, and consider decay of metastable state (conformal vacuum of…
We point out that the (pseudo-)conformal Universe scenario may be realized as decay of conformally invariant, metastable vacuum, which proceeds via spontaneous nucleation and subsequent growth of a bubble of a putative new phase. We study…
A simple description of the vacuum energy (cosmological constant) problem for non-experts is presented. Basic features of cosmology with non-zero vacuum energy are discussed. The astronomical data which indicate that the universe is filled…
If a theory has more than one classically stable vacuum, quantum tunneling and thermal jumps make the transition between the vacua possible. The transition happens through a first order phase transition started by nucleation of a bubble of…
We discuss the notion that quantum fields may induce an effective time-dependent cosmological constant which decays from a large initial value. It is shown that such cosmological models are viable in a non-de Sitter spacetime.
The problem of the vacuum energy decay is studied for both signs of the cosmological constant, through the analysis of the vacuum survival amplitude, defined in terms of the {\em conformal time}, $z$, by ${\mathcal A}(z,z^\prime)\equiv…
Quantum field theory allows for the suppression of vacuum fluctuations, leading to sub-vacuum phenomena. One of these is the appearance of local negative energy density. Selected aspects of negative energy will be reviewed, including the…
In contrast to the phenomenon of nullification of the cosmological constant in the equilibrium vacuum, which is the general property of any quantum vacuum, there are many options in modifying the Einstein equation to allow the cosmological…
A common assumption in quantum field theory is that the energy-momentum 4-vector of any quantum state must be timelike. It will be proven that this is not the case for a Dirac-Maxwell field. In this case quantum states can be shown to exist…
We study the properties of the survival probability of an unstable quantum state described by a Lee Hamiltonian. This theoretical approach resembles closely Quantum Field Theory (QFT): one can introduce in a rather simple framework the…
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…
Several examples are known where quantum gravity effects resolve the classical big bang singularity by a bounce. The most detailed analysis has probably occurred for loop quantum cosmology of isotropic models sourced by a free, massless…
We discuss phenomenology of quantum vacuum. Phenomenology of macroscopic systems has three sources: thermodynamics, topology and symmetry. Momentum space topology determines the universality classes of fermionic vacua. The vacuum in its…
If the universe is trapped and cooled in a metastable false vacuum state, that state will eventually decay by bubble nucleation and expansion. For example, many extensions of the standard model incorporate new scalar fields whose potential…
We study the decay process of an unstable quantum system, especially the deviation from the exponential decay law. We show that the exponential period no longer exists in the case of the s-wave decay with small $Q$ value, where the $Q$…
Dark energy with the usually used equation of state $p=w\rho$, where $w=const<0$ is hydrodynamically unstable. To overcome this drawback we consider the cosmology of a perfect fluid with a linear equation of state of a more general form…
Quantum escape of a particle via a time-dependent confining potential in a semi-infinite one-dimensional space is discussed. We describe the time-evolution of escape states in terms of scattering states of the quantum open system, and…
Some issues of the cosmological constant or dark energy are briefly reviewed. There are an increasing number of observations that constrain the equation of state of dark energy more stringently and favor the time-independent cosmological…
We construct the instantaneous vacuum state for a quantum scalar field coupled to another classical scalar field as described in [1]. We then compare it with the state of low energy constructed for a particular solution. We show that under…