Related papers: Aspects of the negative mode problem in quantum tu…
We address the issues related to the presence of the quantum potential term in a BEC on the observable Analogue Gravity systems. We show that the quantum potential term apparently gives rise to massive scalar excitations of length scales of…
If the Higgs mass m_H is as low as suggested by present experimental information, the Standard Model ground state might not be absolutely stable. We present a detailed analysis of the lower bounds on m_H imposed by the requirement that the…
It has recently been proposed by Mersini et al. 01, Bastero-Gil and Mersini 02 that the dark energy could be attributed to the cosmological properties of a scalar field with a non-standard dispersion relation that decreases exponentially at…
Quantum tunneling introduces a fundamental difference between classical and quantum mechanics. Whenever the classical ground state is non-unique (degenerate), quantum mechanics restore uniqueness thanks to tunneling. A condensate in a…
Quantum backflow is the classically-forbidden effect pertaining to the fact that a particle with a positive momentum may exhibit a negative probability current at some space-time point. We investigate how this peculiar phenomenon extends to…
The quantum-mechanical collapse (alias fall onto the center of particles attracted by potential -1/r^2), or "quantum anomaly", is a well-known issue in the quantum theory. We demonstrate that the mean-field repulsive nonlinearity prevents…
We study features of tunneling dynamics in an exactly-solvable model of N=4 supersymmetric quantum mechanics with a multi-well potential and with broken reflective symmetry. Quantum systems with a phenomenological potential of this type…
We consider a minisuperspace model for a closed universe with small and positive cosmological constant, filled with a massive scalar field conformally coupled to gravity. In the quantum version of this model, the universe may undergo a…
We report on a novel phenomenon of particle cosmology, which features specific cosmological phase transitions via quantum tunnelings through multiple vacua. The latter is inspired by the axiverse ideas and enables us to probe the associated…
We study the effect of back-reaction on the evaporation of quantum black holes. The method used is based on quantum tunneling formalism as proposed in [4]. We give a more realistic picture by considering the fact that a black hole looses…
In the thin-wall approximation, the decay of a gravitating false vacuum to a lower-energy state is affected by the cosmological horizon structure in both spaces. The nucleation radius of a bubble of true vacuum depends on the surface…
Quantum liquids, in which an effective Lorentzian metric and thus some kind of gravity gradually arise in the low-energy corner, are the objects where the problems related to the quantum vacuum can be investigated in detail. In particular,…
The field-theoretical description of quantum fluctuations on the background of a tunneling field $\sigma$ is revisited in the case of a functional Schrodinger approach. We apply this method in the case when quantum fluctuations are coupled…
A central aspect of the cosmological constant problem is to understand why vacuum energy does not gravitate. In order to account for this observation, while allowing for nontrivial dynamics of the quantum vacuum, we motivate a novel…
We analyze the canonical quantum dynamics of the isotropic Universe in a metric approach by adopting a self-interacting scalar field as relational time. When the potential term is absent we are able to associate the the expanding and…
Small violations of spacetime symmetries have recently been identified as promising Planck-scale signals. This talk reviews how such violations can arise in various approaches to quantum gravity, how the emergent low-energy effects can be…
Suppose the usual description of spacetime as a 4-dimensional manifold with a Lorentzian metric breaks down at Planck energies. Can we still construct sensible theoretical models of the universe? Are they testable? Do they lead to a…
In generic Hamiltonian systems that are neither completely integrable nor fully chaotic, phase space consists of a mixture of regular and chaotic components. In classical dynamics, transitions between different invariant sets in phase space…
The positive energy theorem precludes the possibility of Minkowski flat space decaying by any mechanism. In certain circumstances, however, large quantum fluctuations of the gravitational field could arise---not only at the Planck scale,…
Several examples are known where quantum gravity effects resolve the classical big bang singularity by a bounce. The most detailed analysis has probably occurred for loop quantum cosmology of isotropic models sourced by a free, massless…