English

de Sitter as a Resonance

High Energy Physics - Theory 2017-03-15 v3

Abstract

A quantum mechanical formulation of de Sitter cosmological spacetimes still eludes string theory. In this paper we conjecture a potentially rigorous framework in which the status of de Sitter space is the same as that of a resonance in a scattering process. We conjecture that transition amplitudes between certain states with asymptotically supersymmetric flat vacua contain resonant poles characteristic metastable intermediate states. A calculation employing constrained instantons illustrates this idea.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1611.00360,
  title  = {de Sitter as a Resonance},
  author = {Jonathan Maltz and Leonard Susskind},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1611.00360},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

5 pages, 2 figures, to appear in PRL, Minor typos corrected

R2 v1 2026-06-22T16:39:04.172Z