Related papers: Topics in vacuum decay (Ph.D Thesis)
We show an inconsistence of the novel 4D Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity by considering a quantum tunneling process of vacua. Using standard semi-classical techniques, we analytically study the vacuum decay rate for all allowed cases in the…
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…
We investigate false vacuum decay catalysed by black holes under the influence of the higher order Gauss-Bonnet term. We study both bubble nucleation and Hawking-Moss types of phase transition in arbitrary dimension. The equations of motion…
We study "vacuum crossing", which occurs when the vacua of a theory are exchanged as we vary some periodic parameter $\theta$ in a closed loop. We show that vacuum crossing is a useful non-perturbative tool to study strongly-coupled quantum…
During eternal inflation, a landscape of vacua can be populated by the nucleation of bubbles. These bubbles inevitably collide, and collisions sometimes displace the field into a new minimum in a process known as a classical transition. In…
In quantum field theory, the decay of an extended metastable state into the real ground state is known as ``false vacuum decay'' and it takes place via the nucleation of spatially localized bubbles. Despite the large theoretical effort to…
We argue that a generic instability afflicts vacua that arise in theories whose moduli space has large dimension. Specifically, by studying theories with multiple scalar fields we provide numerical evidence that for a generic local minimum…
We investigate the evolution and formation of double-layered vacuum bubbles during cosmological phase transitions with multiple vacua. We employ lattice simulations to show that flyover transitions can produce double-layered vacuum bubbles…
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…
Strongly first-order phase transitions, i.e., those with a large order parameter, are characterized by a considerable supercooling and high velocities of phase transition fronts. A very strong phase transition may have important…
Recently, a novel phenomenon is observed for vacuum decay to proceed via classically allowed dynamical evolution from initial configurations of false vacuum fluctuations. With the help of some occasionally developed large fluctuations in…
Non-equilibrium phase transitions of a scalar field in an expanding spacetime are discussed. These transitions are shown to lead, for appropriate potential energy functions, to a biased choice of vacuum structure which can be analytically…
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…
Vacuum decay in de Sitter space is a process of great physical interest, as it allows to rule out cosmological models in the early and current Universe. Its rate may be described in terms of an instanton in Euclidean space called bounce and…
We investigate vacuum statistics and stability in random axionic landscapes. For this purpose we developed an algorithm for a quick evaluation of the tunneling action, which in most cases is accurate within 10%. We find that stability of a…
We study the problem of false vacuum decay in arbitrary dimensions, in the presence of gravity, and compute the transition probability within the thin-wall approximation, generalising the results of Coleman and de Luccia. In the particular…
This is the first in a series of papers where we study the dynamics of a bubble wall beyond usual approximations, such as the assumptions of spherical bubbles and infinitely thin walls. In this paper, we consider a vacuum phase transition.…
At very early times, the universe was not in a vacuum state. Under the assumtion that the deviation from equillibrium was large, in particular that it is higher than the scale of inflation, we analyse the conditions for local transitions…
Motivated by cosmological first-order phase transitions we examine the nucleation and evolution of vacuum bubbles in non-vacuum environments. Non-standard backgrounds can be relevant in the context of rapid tunneling processes on the…
We explore the stability of domain wall and bubble solutions in theories with compact extra dimensions. The energy density stored inside of the wall can destabilize the volume modulus of a compactification, leading to solutions containing…