相关论文: Exactly Solvable Vacuum Decays with Gravity
I describe a class of oscillating bounce solutions to the Euclidean field equations for gravity coupled to a scalar field theory with multiple vacua. I discuss their implications for vacuum tunneling transitions and for elucidating the…
We find the novel effect on the decay of a false vacuum in view of quantum field theory, which is induced by a field coupling to the scalar field related to a first-order phase transition. This effect of the environment can never be…
We review the description of tunnelling phenomena in the semi-classical approximation in ordinary quantum mechanics and in quantum field theory. In particular, we describe in detail the calculation, up to the first quantum corrections, of…
We study the decay of the false vacuum in the regime where the quantum field theory analysis is not valid, since gravitational effects become important. This happens when the height of the barrier separating the false and the true vacuum is…
Motivated by our earlier argument that the apparent large cosmological constant from quantum fluctuations is actually an artifact of not using a full quantum mechanical superposition to determine the ground state in which the universe lives…
The analysis of the extremal structure of the scalar potentials of gauged maximally extended supergravity models in five, four, and three dimensions, and hence the determination of possible vacuum states of these models is a computationally…
We investigate false vacuum decay of a relativistic scalar field initialized in the metastable minimum of an asymmetric double-well potential. The transition to the true ground state is a well-defined initial-value problem in real time,…
We study the gauge invariance of the decay rate of the false vacuum for the model in which the scalar field responsible for the false vacuum decay has gauge quantum number. In order to calculate the decay rate, one should integrate out the…
I have calculated the exponential suppression factor in the decay rate of the false vacuum (per unit volume) for a real scalar field at finite temperature, in the presence of gravity, in the thin-wall approximation. Temperatures are assumed…
The catastrophic decay of a spacetime with compact dimensions, via bubbles of nothing (BoNs), is probably a generic phenomenon. BoNs admit a 4-dimensional description as singular Coleman-de Luccia bounces of the size modulus field,…
We study bounce solutions and associated negative modes in the class of piecewise linear triangular-shaped potentials that may be viewed as approximations of smooth potentials. In these simple potentials, the bounce solution and action can…
I provide some simple physical arguments that, once gravitation and some subtleties are taken into account, rather broad classes of potentials result in instantons which tunnel relatively rapidly between perturbatively stable minima. In…
Recently proposed de Sitter Swampland conjectures imply non-trivial constraints on a scalar field potential in any effective field theory that admits a quantum gravity completion. The original conjecture apparently excludes many…
The conditions under which cosmologies driven by time varying cosmological terms can be described by a scalar field coupled to a perfect fluid are discussed. An algorithm to reconstruct potentials dynamically and thermodynamically analogue…
We study a gauge theory model where there is an intermediate symmetry breaking to a meta- stable vacuum that breaks a simple gauge group to a U (1) factor. Such models admit the existence of meta-stable magnetic monopoles, which we dub…
Theories with compact extra dimensions are sometimes unstable to decay into a bubble of nothing -- an instability resulting in the destruction of spacetime. We investigate the existence of these bubbles in theories where the moduli fields…
We interpret the Euclidean solution of JT de Sitter gravity as the Coleman-de Luccia instanton for the decay of the low-entropy horizon of its static patch solution into either a Big Crunch or an infinite-entropy Lorentzian de Sitter…
We consider a single real scalar field in flat spacetime with a polynomial potential up to $\phi^4$, that has a local minimum, the false vacuum, and a deeper global minimum, the true vacuum. When the vacua are almost degenerate we are in…
Recently, the calculation of tunneling actions, that control the exponential suppression of the decay of metastable vacua, has been reformulated as an elementary variational problem in field space. This paper extends this formalism to…
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…