Related papers: Aspects of the negative mode problem in quantum tu…
We investigate the negative modes about Coleman-De Luccia bounces governing vacuum transitions in de Sitter space, with the goal of gaining physical insight into the various anomalous results associated with these that have been reported in…
We present a simple and intuitive description of both, the Schwinger effect and false vacuum decay through bubble nucleation, as tunneling problems in one-dimensional relativistic quantum mechanics. Both problems can be described by an…
After picking out what may seem more realistic minimal gravitational deformation of quantum mechanics, we study its back reaction on gravity. The large distance behaviour of Newtonian potential coincides with the result obtained by using of…
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…
The tunneling potential method to calculate the action for vacuum decay is an alternative to the Euclidean bounce method that has a number of attractive features. In this paper we extend the formalism to general spacetime dimension $d>2$…
The cosmological constant problem is the principal obstacle in the attempt to interpret dark energy as the quantum vacuum energy. We suggest that the obstacle can be removed, i.e. that the cosmological constant problem can be resolved by…
I review some recent results showing that the physics of negative energy densities, as predicted by relativistic quantum field theories, is more complicated than has generally been appreciated. On the one hand, in external potentials where…
The tunneling approach for entropy generation in quantum gravity is applied to black holes. The area entropy is recovered and shown to count only a tiny fraction of the black hole degeneracy. The latter stems from the extension of the wave…
We investigate two simplified non-singular cyclic models with a negative time-varying cosmological constant to represent the non-conventional mechanism of negative cosmological constant expected to address the late-time cosmic acceleration.…
Tunneling in quantum field theory is well understood in the case of a single scalar field. However, in theories with spontaneous symmetry breaking, one has to take into account the additional zero modes which appear due to the Goldstone…
Solutions to explicit time-dependent problems in quantum mechanics are rare. In fact, all known solutions are coupled to specific properties of the Hamiltonian and may be divided into two categories: One class consists of time-dependent…
A gravitationally collapsed object can bounce-out from its horizon via a tunnelling process that violates the classical equations in a finite region. Since tunnelling is a non-perturbative phenomenon, it cannot be described in terms of…
This is an essay sketching the line of thinking which has led the present author to propose the constituent or atomic model of gravitation more than a decade ago. It turns out that viewing the problem of gravitation as a quantum many body…
We present a fast and efficient method for studying vacuum stability constraints in multi-scalar theories beyond the Standard Model. This method is designed for a reliable use in large scale parameter scans. The minimization of the scalar…
We consider the decay of "false kinks," that is, kinks formed in a scalar field theory with a pair of degenerate symmetry-breaking false vacua in 1+1 dimensions. The true vacuum is symmetric. A second scalar field and a peculiar potential…
In the functional Schrodinger formalism, we obtain the wave function describing collapsing dust in an anti-de Sitter background, as seen by a co-moving observer, by mapping the resulting variable mass Schrodinger equation to that of the…
Using a new approach to the analysis of false vacuum decay based on the so-called tunneling potential, we develop a general method to find scalar potentials with a false vacuum with exactly solvable decay at the semi-classical level,…
The cosmological constant problem is principally concerned with trying to understand how the zero-point energy of quantum fields contributes to gravity. Here we take the approach that by addressing a fundamental unresolved issue in quantum…
The search for a quantum theory of gravity has followed two parallel but different paths. One aims at arriving at the final theory starting from a priori assumptions as to its form and building it from the ground up. The other tries to…
We consider the decay of vortices trapped in the false vacuum of a theory of scalar electrodynamics in 2+1 dimensions. The potential is inspired by models with intermediate symmetry breaking to a metastable vacuum that completely breaks a…