Related papers: Hawking-Moss bounces and vacuum decay rates
The Hawking-Moss (HM) bounce solution implies that the tunneling amplitude between vacua is uniquely determined by the vacuum energy at the initial vacuum and the top of a potential barrier, regardless of the field distance between them…
As a first step toward understanding a lanscape of vacua in a theory of non-linear massive gravity, we consider a landscape of a single scalar field and study tunneling between a pair of adjacent vacua. We study the Hawking-Moss (HM)…
The recent transition from decelerated to accelerated expansion can be seen as a reflection (or "bounce") in the connection variable, defined by the inverse comoving Hubble length ($b=\dot a$, on-shell). We study the quantum cosmology of…
We investigate the decay rate of a false vacuum state in de Sitter space at high Hubble rates, using two methods: the Hawking-Moss instanton method which is fully quantum mechanical but relies on the saddle-point approximation, and the…
It appears difficult to construct a simple model for an open universe based on the one bubble inflationary scenario. The reason is that one needs a large mass to avoid the tunneling via the Hawking Moss solution and a small mass for…
We revisit the derivation of the Hawking-Moss transition rate. Using the static coordinates, we show that the Euclidean action is entirely determined by the contribution of the entropy of de Sitter space which is proportional to the surface…
Vacuum decay in de Sitter space is a process of great physical interest, as it allows to rule out cosmological models in the early and current Universe. Its rate may be described in terms of an instanton in Euclidean space called bounce and…
It appears difficult to construct a simple model for an open universe based on the one bubble inflationary scenario. The reason is that one needs a large mass to avoid the tunneling via the Hawking Moss solution and a small mass for…
We use analytic estimates and numerical simulations to explore the stochastic approach to vacuum decay. According to this approach, the time derivative of a scalar field, which is in a local vacuum state, develops a large fluctuation and…
We derive the rate for transitions between de Sitter vacua by treating the field theory on the static patch as a thermal system. This reproduces the Coleman-De Luccia formalism for calculating the rate, but leads to a modified…
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 derive the decay rate of an unstable phase of a quantum field theory in the presence of an impurity in the thin-wall approximation. This derivation is based on the how the impurity changes the (flat spacetime) geometry relative to case…
We study the contribution to the decay of de Sitter vacua from bounces with O(3) x O(2) symmetry. These correspond to the thermal production of a vacuum bubble at the center of a horizon volume with radius r_H and a temperature defined by…
The Standard Model Higgs potential may become unbounded from below at large field values, with important cosmological implications. For a potential of this form, the commonly assumed scenario of a nucleated thin-wall bubble driving the…
In the standard procedure for calculating the decay rate of a metastable vacuum the solution of the classical Euclidean equation of motion of the background field is needed. On the other hand radiative corrections have to be taken into…
The quantum behavior of noncommutative eternal inflation is quite different from the usual knowledge. Unlike the usual eternal inflation, the quantum fluctuation of noncommutative eternal inflation is suppressed by the Hubble parameter. Due…
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 study radiative corrections to the decay rate of false vacua, paying particular attention to the renormalization-scale dependence of the decay rate. The decay rate exponentially depends on the bounce action. The bounce action itself is…
We formulate the transition from decelerated to accelerated expansion as a bounce in connection space and study its quantum cosmology, knowing that reflections are notorious for bringing quantum effects to the fore. We use a formalism for…
We do not solve tensions with concordance cosmology; we do obtain $H_0\approx 74\,$km/s/Mpc from CMB+BAO+SN data in our model, but that is not the point. Discrepancies in Hubble constant values obtained by various astrophysical probes…