De Sitter decays to infinity

Autor: Patrick Draper, Isabel Garcia Garcia, Benjamin Lillard
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol 2021, Iss 12, Pp 1-53 (2021)
Journal of High Energy Physics
ISSN: 1029-8479
DOI: 10.1007/jhep12(2021)154
Popis: Bubbles of nothing are a class of vacuum decay processes present in some theories with compactified extra dimensions. We investigate the existence and properties of bubbles of nothing in models where the scalar pseudomoduli controlling the size of the extra dimensions are stabilized at positive vacuum energy, which is a necessary feature of any realistic model. We map the construction of bubbles of nothing to a four-dimensional Coleman-De Luccia problem and establish necessary conditions on the asymptotic behavior of the scalar potential for the existence of suitable solutions. We perform detailed analyses in the context of five-dimensional theories with metastable $\text{dS}_4 \times S^1$ vacua, using analytic approximations and numerical methods to calculate the decay rate. We find that bubbles of nothing sometimes exist in potentials with no ordinary Coleman-De Luccia decay process, and that in the examples we study, when both processes exist, the bubble of nothing decay rate is typically faster. Our methods can be generalized to other stabilizing potentials and internal manifolds.
52 pages, 16 figures, including three appendices. v2: Updated to match published manuscript, references added
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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