Bubble of nothing decays of unstable theories
| Autor: | Patrick Draper, Isabel Garcia Garcia, Benjamin Lillard |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Physics
High Energy Physics - Theory 010308 nuclear & particles physics Bubble FOS: Physical sciences General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) 01 natural sciences General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology Theoretical physics High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) Nothing 0103 physical sciences 010306 general physics |
| Zdroj: | Physical Review |
| Popis: | 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 that set the size of the extra dimensions are stabilized at a positive vacuum energy -- a necessary ingredient of any theory that aspires to describe the real world. Using bottom-up methods, and focusing on a five-dimensional toy model, we show that four-dimensional de Sitter vacua admit bubbles of nothing for a wide class of stabilizing potentials. We show that, unlike ordinary Coleman-De Luccia tunneling, the corresponding decay rate remains non-zero in the limit of vanishing vacuum energy. Potential implications include a lower bound on the size of compactified dimensions. Comment: references added; matches journal version |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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