Related papers: Aspects of the negative mode problem in quantum tu…
In the absence of gravity, one can prove that tunnelling instantons exhibit exactly one negative mode in their spectrum of fluctuations. It is precisely the existence of this tunnelling negative mode that warrants an interpretation of these…
There is a single negative mode in the spectrum of small perturbations about the tunneling solutions describing a metastable vacuum decay in flat spacetime. This mode is needed for consistent description of decay processes. When gravity is…
A tunneling bounce driving the decay of a metastable vacuum must respect an integral constraint dictated by simple scaling arguments that is very useful to determine key properties of the bounce. After illustrating how this works in a…
The so-called negative mode problem in the path integral approach to the false vacuum decay with the effect of gravity has been an unsolved problem. Several years ago, we proposed a conjecture which is to be proved in order to give a…
Quasiclassical methods are used to define dynamical tunneling times in models of quantum cosmological bounces. These methods provide relevant new information compared with the traditional treatment of quantum tunneling by means of tunneling…
We compute tunneling in a quantum field theory in 1+1 dimensions for a field potential $U(\Phi)$ of the asymmetric double well type. The system is localized initially in the ``false vacuum''. We consider the case of a {\em compact space}…
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…
We study quantum mechanical tunneling using complex solutions of the classical field equations. Simple visualization techniques allow us to unify and generalize previous treatments, and straightforwardly show the connection to the standard…
It was recently shown that tunneling wavefunction proposal is consistent with loop quantum geometry corrections including both holonomy and inverse scale factor corrections in the gravitational part of a spatially closed isotropic model…
We study the effect of vortices on the tunneling decay of a symmetry-breaking false vacuum in three spacetime dimensions with gravity. The scenario considered is one in which the initial state, rather than being the homogeneous false…
In the path integral approach to false vacuum decay with the effect of gravity, there is an unsolved problem, called the negative mode problem. We show that the appearance of a supercritical supercurvature mode in the one-bubble open…
We study non conformal negative modes of Schwarzschild black holes in the five dimensional Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity theory with a zero or negative cosmological constant, in the context of the semiclassical quantum gravity formulated by…
The spectrum of small perturbations about oscillating bounce solutions recently discussed in the literature is investigated. Our study supports quite intuitive and expected result: the bounce with N nodes has exactly N homogeneous negative…
The Planck scale is usually believed to be an unpassable wall. Putting a cutoff there and thinking of it as a quantized spacetime entity shows that. However, this is exactly the cause of many problems in quantum gravity. The cosmological…
The catastrophic decay of a spacetime with compact dimensions, via bubbles of nothing (BoNs), is probably a generic phenomenon. BoNs admit a 4-dimensional description as singular Coleman-de Luccia bounces of the size modulus field,…
The thermodynamic instability, for example the negative heat capacity, of a black hole implies the existence of off-shell negative mode(s) (tachyonic mode(s)) around the black hole geometry in the Euclidean path integral formalism of…
The tension, if not outright inconsistency, between quantum physics and general relativity is one of the great problems facing physics at the turn of the millennium. Most often, the problems arising in merging Einstein gravity and quantum…
We revisit the formalism for tunneling in quantum field theory developed by Coleman and collaborators. In particular using the generalization of WKB methods for tunneling in quantum mechanics we avoid the problems with negative eigenvalues…
If we imagine rewinding the universe to early times, the scale factor shrinks and the existence of a finite spatial volume may play a role in quantum tunnelling effects in a closed universe. It has recently been shown that such finite…
We study the negative modes of gravitational instantons representing vacuum decay in asymptotically flat space-time. We consider two different vacuum decay scenarios: the Coleman-de Luccia $\mathrm{O}(4)$-symmetric bubble, and…