Comments on the vacuum energy decay

Abstract

The {\em instability of vacuum energy} in de Sitter space as discussed recently by Polyakov is argued to be a generic feature when external gravitational fields are present. It is related to the existence of {\em forbidden} (by momentum conservation) decays derived in some detail by Bros, Epstein and Moschella. Some calculations are discussed in a conformally invariant setting, and a flat space model is presented.

25 pages, 1 figures; significant changes; added content from another preprint

References in corpus (6)

• De Sitter Space and Eternity
• Decay of Vacuum Energy
• Lifetime of a massive particle in a de Sitter universe
• Real or Imaginary? (On pair creation in de Sitter space)
• Classical radiation by free-falling charges in de Sitter spacetime
• Eternity and the cosmological constant

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Infrared Sensitivity of Unstable Vacua
• One-loop gravitational wave spectrum in de Sitter spacetime
• IR divergences and kinetic equation in de Sitter space. (Poincare patch; Principal series)
• Infrared dynamics of massive scalars from the complementary series in de Sitter space
• On the Perturbative Stability of Quantum Field Theories in de Sitter Space
• Spontaneous symmetry breaking in inflationary cosmology: on the fate of Goldstone Bosons
• Finite Time Vacuum Survival Amplitude and Vacuum Energy Decay
• Gauge dependence in QED amplitudes in expanding de Sitter space