Related papers: Impact of Gravity on Vacuum Stability
A new approach to vacuum decay in quantum field theory, based on a simple variational formulation in field space using a tunneling potential, is ideally suited to study the effects of gravity on such decays. The method allows to prove in…
It has been recently shown that, contrary to an intuitive decoupling argument, the presence of new physics at very large energy scales (say around the Planck scale) can have a strong impact on the electroweak vacuum lifetime. In particular,…
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…
We study the dynamics of false vacuum bubbles in the Brans-Dicke theory of gravity by using the thin shell or thin wall approximation. We consider a false vacuum bubble that has a different value for the Brans-Dicke field between the inside…
We study the decay of the false vacuum in the regime where the quantum field theory analysis is not valid, since gravitational effects become important. This happens when the height of the barrier separating the false and the true vacuum is…
Coleman and De Luccia (CDL) showed that gravitational effects can prevent the decay by bubble nucleation of a Minkowski or AdS false vacuum. In their thin-wall approximation this happens whenever the surface tension in the bubble wall…
Metastable states decay at zero temperature through quantum tunneling at an exponentially small rate, which depends on the Coleman-de Luccia instanton, also known as bounce. In some theories, the bounce may not exist or its on-shell action…
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…
Consistency of the unconventional view of de Sitter space as a quantum theory of gravity with a finite number of degrees of freedom requires that Coleman-De Luccia tunneling rates to vacua with negative cosmological constant should be…
A recent analysis of the false-vacuum decay in non-perturbative regimes is here extended in the presence of Einstein gravity, computing the corresponding effective potential and decay rate. We consider a $\lambda \phi^4$ scalar field theory…
I have calculated the exponential suppression factor in the decay rate of the false vacuum (per unit volume) for a real scalar field at finite temperature, in the presence of gravity, in the thin-wall approximation. Temperatures are assumed…
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…
We compute the quantum gravitational contributions to the standard model effective potential and analyze their effects on the Higgs vacuum stability in the framework of effective field theory. Non-renormalizability of Einstein gravity…
We investigate the role of nonperturbative, bubble-like inhomogeneities on the decay rate of false-vacuum states in two and three-dimensional scalar field theories. The inhomogeneities are induced by setting up large-amplitude oscillations…
Whether the Standard Model electroweak vacuum is stable, metastable or unstable depends crucially on the top mass (and, to a lesser extent, on other measurable quantities). These topics are reviewed and updated by taking into account the…
This paper reexamines the question of vacuum decay in theories of quantum gravity. In particular it suggests that decay into stable flat or AdS vacua, never occurs. Instead, vacuum decay occurs, if at all, into a cosmological spacetime. If…
We investigate the stability of the electroweak vacuum during and after inflation by taking into account the effects of classical gravity in the quantum dynamics. In particular we show that the possible instability may be avoided without…
We investigate and classify the possible types of false vacuum bubbles in Einstein gravity. The false vacuum bubbles can occur only if gravity is taken into account. We show that there exist solutions only with compact geometries. The…
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 study the effects of a fixed de Sitter geometry background in scenarios of false vacuum decay. It is currently understood that bubble nucleation processes associated with first order phase transitions are particularly important in…