Related papers: Barnacles and Gravity
We review a theoretical perspective of the dynamics of glass forming liquids and the glass transition. It is a perspective we have developed with our collaborators during this decade. It is based upon the structure of trajectory space. This…
Decay of a de Sitter vacuum may proceed through a "static" instanton, representing pair creation of critical bubbles separated by a distance comparable to the Hubble radius -- a process somewhat analogous to thermal activation in flat…
It is argued that quantum gravity has an interpretation as a topological field theory provided a certain constraint from the path intergral measure is respected. The constraint forces us to couple gauge and matter fields to gravity for…
A type of scenario is considered where electrically charged vacuum bubbles, formed from degenerate or nearly degenerate vacuua separated by a thin domain wall, are cosmologically produced due to the breaking of a discrete symmetry, with the…
We propose a new framework for solving the hierarchy problem which does not rely on either supersymmetry or technicolor. In this framework, the gravitational and gauge interactions become united at the weak scale, which we take as the only…
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…
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 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 uncover a new gravitational-wave production mechanism in cosmological, first-order, thermal phase transitions. These are usually assumed to proceed via the nucleation of bubbles of the stable phase inside the metastable phase. However,…
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…
The Universe, far to be homogenous, expands in large empty bubbles of the large-scale structure, but not in mass concentrations like galaxies, so that the Robertson-Walker solution does not fit. We suggest that a symmetry breaking occurred…
We study the effects of internal symmetries on the decay by bubble nucleation of a metastable false vacuum. The zero modes about the bounce solution that are associated with the breaking of continuous internal symmetries result in an…
The decay of metastable 'false vacuum' states via bubble nucleation plays a crucial role in many cosmological scenarios. Cold-atom analog experiments will soon provide the first empirical probes of this process, with potentially…
A shallow, vertically shaken granular bed in a quasi 2-D container is studied experimentally yielding a wider variety of phenomena than in any previous study: (1) bouncing bed, (2) undulations, (3) granular Leidenfrost effect, (4)…
We use a full general relativistic framework to study the self-similar expansion of bubbles of the stable phase into a flat Friedmann-Lema\^itre-Robertson-Walker Universe in a first order phase transition in the early Universe. With a…
The volume fractions of vacua in an eternally inflating multiverse are described by a coarse-grain rate equation, which accounts for volume expansion and vacuum transitions via bubble formation. We generalize the rate equation to account…
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…
In a pioneering paper on the role of gravity on false vacuum decay, Coleman and De Luccia showed that a strong gravitational field can stabilize the false vacuum, suppressing the formation of true vacuum bubbles. This result is obtained for…
This talk reviews our recent work showing how tiny black holes can act as nucleation sites for the decay of the metastable Higgs vacuum. We start by discussing the formation of thin wall bubbles of true vacuum inside a false vacuum, and…
A granular system confined in a quasi two-dimensional box that is vertically vibrated can transit to an absorbing state in which all particles bounce vertically in phase with the box, with no horizontal motion. In principle, this state can…