Related papers: Vacuum instability and gravitational collapse
In theories of supersymmetry breaking, it is often the case that there is more than one metastable vacuum. First-order phase transitions among such metastable vacua may generate a stochastic background of gravitational waves, the…
The 2+1-dimensional geodesic circularly symmetric solutions of Einstein-massless-scalar field equations with negative cosmological constant are found and their local and global properties are studied. It is found that one of them represents…
We study black holes in AdS-like spacetimes, with the horizon given by an arbitrary positive curvature Einstein metric. A criterion for classical instability of such black holes is found in the large and small black hole limits. Examples of…
We study the instability of charged anti-de Sitter black holes in four or higher-dimension under fragmentation. The instability of fragmentation breaks the black hole into two black holes. We have found that the region near extremal or…
We present the first fully general relativistic dynamical simulations of Abelian Higgs cosmic strings using 3+1D numerical relativity. Focusing on cosmic string loops, we show that they collapse due to their tension and can either (i)…
The Standard Model Higgs potential becomes unstable at large Higgs field values where its quartic coupling becomes negative. While the tunneling lifetime of our current electroweak vacuum is comfortably longer than the age of the universe,…
Standard General Relativity assumes that, in the absence of classical matter sources, spacetime is empty. This chapter considers and analyses the new behaviours of the gravitational field that appear when one substitutes this emptiness by a…
Theories of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking predict a strong first order cosmological phase transition: we compute the resulting signals, primordial black holes and gravitational waves. These theories employ one SM-neutral scalar,…
The problem of the stabilization of moduli is discussed within the context of compactified strongly coupled heterotic string theory. It is shown that all geometric, vector bundle and five-brane moduli are completely fixed, within a…
Models with vector fields acquiring a non-vanishing vacuum expectation value along one spatial direction have been proposed to sustain a prolonged stage of anisotropic accelerated expansion. Such models have been used for realizations of…
The behavior of black hole horizons under extreme conditions-such as near collapse or phase transitions-remains less understood, particularly in the context of soft hair and Aretakis instabilities. We show that the breakdown of conformal…
For the current central values of the Higgs and top masses, the Standard Model Higgs potential develops an instability at a scale of the order of $10^{11}$ GeV. We show that a cosmological signature of such instability could be dark matter…
An internal singularity of a string four-dimensional black hole with second order curvature corrections is discussed. A restriction to a minimal size of a neutral black hole is obtained in the frame of the model considered. Vacuum…
Vacuum polarization of a massive scalar field in the background of a two-dimensional version of a spinning cosmic string is investigated. It is shown that when the `radius of the universe' is such that spacetime is globally hyperbolic the…
The vacuum must contain virtual fluctuations of black hole microstates for each mass $M$. We observe that the expected suppression for $M\gg m_p$ is counteracted by the large number $Exp[S_{bek}]$ of such states. From string theory we learn…
We study gravitational collapse of a spherically symmetric scalar field in Einstein-aether theory (general relativity coupled to a dynamical unit timelike vector field). The initial value formulation is developed, and numerical simulations…
We report the existence of unstable, s-wave modes, for black strings in Gauss-Bonnet theory (which is quadratic in the curvature) in seven dimensions. This theory admits analytic uniform black strings that in the transverse section are…
We discuss the black hole effective action and define its static subsector. We determine the induced gravito-static polarization constants (electric Love numbers) of static black holes (Schwarzschild) in an arbitrary dimension, namely the…
We work on the relation between the local thermodynamic instability and the dynamical instability of large black holes in four-dimensional anti-de Sitter space proposed by Gubser and Mitra. We find that all perturbations suppressing the…
We study the configuration of a typical highly excited string as one slowly increases the string coupling. The dominant interactions are the long range dilaton and gravitational attraction. In four spacetime dimensions, the string slowly…