Related papers: Is the vacuum stable?
The stability of the electroweak vacuum imposes important constraints on new physics models. Such new physics models may introduce one or more new thermal phases with a lower free energy than that of the electroweak vacuum. In this case,…
The stability of our vacuum is analyzed and several aspects concerning this question are reviewed. 1) In the standard Glashow-Weinberg-Salam (GWS) model we review the instability towards the formation of a bubble of lower energy density and…
We try to find conditions, the fulfillment of which allows a universe born in a metastable false vacuum state to survive and not to collapse. The conditions found are in the form of inequalities linking the depending on time $t$…
Recent LHC results concerning the mass of the Higgs boson indicate that the vacuum in our Universe may be unstable. We analyze properties of unstable vacuum states from the point of view of the quantum theory of unstable states. From the…
We analyze properties of unstable vacuum states from the point of view of the quantum theory. In the literature one can find some suggestions that some of false (unstable) vacuum states may survive up to times when their survival…
[Talk presented at the International Seminar Quarks `92, Zvenigorod, Russia, May 11-17, 1992.] The electroweak vacuum need not be absolutely stable. For certain top and Higgs masses in the Minimal Standard Model, it is instead metastable…
The general thermodynamic analysis of the quantum vacuum, which is based on our knowledge of the vacua in condensed-matter systems, is consistent with the Einstein earlier view on the cosmological constant. In the equilibrium Universes the…
If the universe is trapped and cooled in a metastable false vacuum state, that state will eventually decay by bubble nucleation and expansion. For example, many extensions of the standard model incorporate new scalar fields whose potential…
A diverse set of observations now compellingly suggest that Universe possesses a nonzero cosmological constant. In the context of quantum-field theory a cosmological constant corresponds to the energy density of the vacuum, and the wanted…
We study the question whether a possible metastable vacuum state is actually populated in a phase transition in the early universe, as is usually assumed in the discussion of vacuum stability bounds e.g. for Standard Model parameters. A…
Using Heisenberg's uncertainty principle it is shown that the gravitational stability condition for a crystalline vacuum cosmic space implies to obtain an equation formally equivalent to the relation first used by Gamow to predict the…
Under the hypothesis that the cosmological constant vanishes in the true ground state with lowest possible energy density, we argue that the observed small but finite vacuum-like energy density can be explained if we consider a theory with…
Starting from the assumption that general relativity might be an emergent phenomenon showing up at low-energies from an underlying microscopic structure, we re-analyze the stability of a static closed Universe filled with radiation. In this…
The Einstein static universe has played a central role in a number of emergent scenarios recently put forward to deal with the singular origin of the standard cosmological model. Here we study the existence and stability of the Einstein…
We study how the hot Universe evolves and acquires the prevailing vacuum state, demonstrating that in specific conditions which are believed to apply, the Universe becomes frozen into the state with the smallest value of Higgs vacuum field…
We propose a model of dynamical relaxation of the cosmological constant. Technical naturalness of the model and the present value of the vacuum energy density imply an upper bound on the supersymmetry breaking scale and the reheating…
The scalar potential of the MSSM may have local and global minima characterized by non-zero expectation values of charged and colored bosons. Even if the true vacuum is not color and charge conserving, the early Universe is likely to occupy…
Increasing improvements in the independent determinations of the Hubble constant and the age of the universe now seem to indicate that we need a small non-vanishing cosmological constant to make the two independent observations consistent…
Properties of unstable false vacuum states are analyzed from the point of view of the quantum theory of unstable states. Some of false vacuum states survive up to times when their survival probability has a non-exponential form. At times…
Under the assumption that the cosmological constant vanishes in the true ground state with lowest possible energy density, we argue that the observed small but finite vacuum-like energy density can be explained if we consider a theory with…