Related papers: The No-Negative Mode Theorem in False Vacuum Decay…
In this paper, we give both positive and negative answers to Gromov's compactness question regarding positive scalar curvature metrics on noncompact manifolds. First we construct examples that give a negative answer to Gromov's compactness…
We provide a novel, concise and self-contained evaluation of true- and false vacuum decay rates in general relativity. We insist on general covariance and choose observable boundary conditions, which yields the well known false-vacuum decay…
With this note we want to point out that already in the early days of cosmology it was understood that negative pressure could eliminate gravitational singularities in a natural way e.g. E.B. Gliner, Sov. Phys. JETP 22(1966)378 and M.A.…
We consider a formalism to describe the false-vacuum decay of a scalar field in gauge theories in non-perturbative regimes. We find that the larger the gauge coupling with respect to the self-coupling of the scalar, the shallower the local…
Affine gravity, a gravity theory based on affine connection with no notion of metric, supports scalar field dynamics only if scalar fields have non-vanishing potential. The non-vanishing vacuum energy ensures that the cosmological constant…
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…
One of the greatest problems of standard cosmology is the Big Bang singularity. Previously it has been shown that non-local ghostfree higher-derivative modifications of Einstein gravity in the ultra-violet regime can admit non-singular…
False vacuum decay in field theory may be formulated as a boundary value problem in Euclidean space. In a previous work, we studied its solution in single scalar field theories with quadratic gravity and used it to find obstructions to…
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 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…
Inflation is the currently accepted paradigm for the beginnings of the Universe. To explain the observed almost scale invariant spectrum of density perturbations with only a slight spectral tilt, inflation must have been "slow roll", that…
The existence of instantonic decay modes would indicate a semi-classical instability of the vacua of ten and eleven dimensional supergravity theories. Decay modes whose spin structures are incompatible with those of supersymmetric vacua…
We study the embedding of the monodromy inflation mechanism by E. Silverstein and A. Westphal (2008) in a concrete compactification setting. To that end, we look for an appropriate vacuum of type IIA supergravity, corresponding to the…
We introduce a novel theory of gravity based on the inverse of the Ricci tensor, that we call the anticurvature tensor. We derive the general equations of motion for any Lagrangian function of the curvature and anticurvature scalars. We…
We review some perturbative results obtained in quantum gravity in an accelerating cosmological background. We then describe a class of non-local, purely gravitational models which have the correct structure to reproduce the leading…
It is sometimes argued that observation of tensor modes from inflation would provide the first evidence for quantum gravity. However, in the usual inflationary formalism, also the scalar modes involve quantised metric perturbations. We…
We study the cosmology of a toy modified theory of gravity in which gravity shuts off at short distances, as in the fat graviton scenario of Sundrum. In the weak-field limit, the theory is perturbatively local, ghost-free and unitary,…
We investigate chaotic inflation models with two scalar fields, such that one field (the inflaton) rolls while the other is trapped in a false vacuum state. The false vacuum becomes unstable when the inflaton field falls below some critical…
An outgrowth of the idea of inflation is advanced. In the inflation regime, the singularity condition is broken. Equations which govern inflation are invariant under time reversal, so that they describe deflation as well. Those two…
We reevaluate the predictions of inflation regarding primordial gravity waves, which should appear as B-modes in the CMB, in light of the fact that the standard inflationary paradigm is unable to account for the transition from an initially…