Related papers: False vacuum decay in de Sitter space-time
Distinguishing whether a system supports alternate low-energy (locally stable) states -- stable (true vacuum) versus metastable (false vacuum) -- by direct observation can be difficult when the lifetime of the state is very long but…
The metastable dark energy scenario is revisited by assuming that the current false vacuum energy density is the remnant from a primeval inflationary stage. The zero temperature scalar field potential is here described by an even power…
A quantum deformation of three-dimensional de Sitter space was proposed in hep-th/0407188. We use this to calculate the entropy of Kerr-de Sitter space, using a canonical ensemble, and find agreement with the semiclassical result.
We develop semiclassical methods for studying bubble nucleation in models with parameters that vary slowly in time. Introducing a more general rotation of the time contour allows access to a larger set of final states, and typically a…
We explore the possibility of obtaining de Sitter vacua in strongly coupled heterotic models by adding various corrections to the supergravity potential energy. We show that, in a generic compactification scenario, Fayet-Iliopoulos terms…
We develop a real-time Wigner-functional lattice framework with positive Hartree-Gaussian initial sampling and introduce a connected-cluster survival criterion for extracting false-vacuum decay rates across the crossover from quantum…
Recently it was discovered that the Standard Model vacuum may suffer an essential metastability near the Planck scale. In this regard it makes sense to study in more detail the decay processes of the metastable vacuum and to develop methods…
In recent papers [1,2], it has been shown that the presence of negative norm states or negative frequency solutions are indispensable for a fully covariant quantization of the minimally coupled scalar field in de Sitter space. Their…
The conventional interpretation of the Hawking-Moss (HM) solution implies a transition rate between vacua that depends only on the values of the potential in the initial vacuum and at the top of a potential barrier, leading to the…
In the standard lore the decay of the false vacuum of a single-field potential is described by a semi-classical Euclidean bounce configuration that can be found using overshoot/undershoot algorithms, and whose action suppresses…
We present a formalism for semiclassical time evolution in quantum mechanics, building on a century of work. We identify complex saddle points in real time, real saddle points in complex time, and complex saddle points in complex time that…
Motivated by Maldacena's observer-centric formulation of de~Sitter physics \cite{Maldacena:2024spf}, we develop an observer-dependent state-counting framework in Euclidean de~Sitter space by modeling the observer as a massive equatorial…
I discuss empty space, as it appears in the physical foundations of relativistic field theories and in the semiclassical study of isolated systems. Of particular interest is the relationship between empirical measurements of the…
The proposal of a rapid sign-switching cosmological constant in the late universe, mirroring a transition from anti-de Sitter (AdS) to de Sitter (dS) space, has significantly improved the fit to observational data and provides a compelling…
A dynamical aspect of quantum gravity on de Sitter spacetime is investigated by holography or the dS/CFT correspondence. We show that de Sitter spacetime emerges from a free Sp(N) vector model by complexifying the ghost fields and flowing…
We discuss an exact false vacuum decay rate at one loop for a real and complex scalar field in a quartic-quartic potential with two tree-level minima. The bounce solution is used to compute the functional determinant from both fluctuations.…
The decay of quasi-stable quantum system involves primarily an outgoing probability current density. However, during the transition from exponential to inverse-power-law decay there are time intervals during which this current, although…
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…
We briefly review false-vacuum decay and examine a recent proposal by Frampton to model the origin of the first single-celled organism (SCO) as a phase transition between no-life and life vacua. In his calculation the exponent $n$ entering…
We explore the question of how to probe the vacuum structure of space time by a massive scalar field through interaction with background gravitons. Using the $\Gamma$-regularization for the in-/out-state formalism, we find the effective…