Related papers: Nothing is certain in string compactifications
We investigate the non-perturbative stability of supersymmetric compactifications with respect to decay via a bubble of nothing. We show examples where this kind of instability is not prohibited by the spin structure, i.e., periodicity of…
The Cobordism Conjecture predicts spacetime-ending configurations, such as Bubbles of Nothing (BoN), being commonplace. These correspond to vacuum decays in which the compactification manifold $\mathcal{C}_n$ shrinks to a point, with the…
Theories with compact extra dimensions can exhibit a vacuum instability known as a bubble of nothing. These decay modes can be obstructed if the internal manifold is stabilized by fluxes, or if it carries Wilson lines for background gauge…
Theories with compact extra dimensions are sometimes unstable to decay into a bubble of nothing -- an instability resulting in the destruction of spacetime. We investigate the existence of these bubbles in theories where the moduli fields…
The bubble of nothing is a solution to Einstein's equations where a circle shrinks and pinches off smoothly. As such, it is one of the simplest examples of a dynamical cobordism to nothing. We take a first step in studying how this solution…
Bubbles of nothing are a class of vacuum decay processes present in some theories with compactified extra dimensions. We investigate the existence and properties of bubbles of nothing in models where the scalar pseudomoduli controlling the…
We construct a simple AdS_4 x S^1 flux compactification stabilized by a complex scalar field winding the extra dimension and demonstrate an instability via nucleation of a bubble of nothing. This occurs when the Kaluza -- Klein dimension…
Nothing---the absence of spacetime---can be either an endpoint of tunneling, as in the bubble of nothing, or a starting point for tunneling, as in the quantum creation of a universe. We argue that these two tunnelings can be treated within…
In this contribution we review the ideas and results presented in the articles arXiv:2002.01764 and arXiv:2110.08276 where the decay of AdS vacua into bubbles of nothing is studied. We firstly consider AdS vacua in General Relativity with a…
We study non-perturbative instabilities of AdS spacetime in General Relativity with a cosmological constant in arbitrary dimensions. In this simple setup we explicitly construct a class of gravitational instantons generalizing Witten's…
We study bubble of nothing decays and their reverse processes, the creation of vacua through `bubbles of something', in models of the Universe based on string theory. From the four-dimensional perspective, the corresponding gravitational…
Within the framework of flux compactifications, we construct an instanton describing the quantum creation of an open universe from nothing. The solution has many features in common with the smooth 6d bubble of nothing solutions discussed…
We construct instanton solutions describing the decay of flux compactifications of a $6d$ gauge theory by generalizing the Kaluza-Klein bubble of nothing. The surface of the bubble is described by a smooth magnetically charged solitonic…
We conjecture that the end point of bulk closed string tachyon decay at any non-zero coupling, is the annihilation of space time by Witten's bubble of nothing, resulting in a topological phase of the theory. In support of this we present a…
Vacuum compactifications may suffer from instabilities under small perturbations or tunnel effects; both are difficult to analyze. In this paper we consider the issue from a higher-dimensional perspective. We first look at how stability…
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…
Bubbles of nothing (BoNs) describe the decay of spacetimes with compact dimensions and are thus of fundamental importance for many higher dimensional theories proposed beyond the Standard Model. BoNs admit a 4-dimensional description in…
The perturbative vacuum of type 0 string theory is unstable due to the existence of the closed string tachyon. This instability can be removed by S^1 compactification with twisted boundary condition for the tachyon field. We show that even…
It is widely believed that consistent theories of quantum gravity satisfy two basic kinematic constraints: they are free from any global symmetry, and they contain a complete spectrum of gauge charges. For compact, abelian gauge groups,…
We construct an instanton describing the pair production of non-Kaluza Klein bubbles of nothing in higher odd dimensional de Sitter spaces. In addition to showing that higher dimensional de Sitter spaces have a nonzero probability to become…