Bounces with O(3) x O(2) symmetry

Abstract

We study the contribution to the decay of de Sitter vacua from bounces with O(3) x O(2) symmetry. These correspond to the thermal production of a vacuum bubble at the center of a horizon volume with radius r_H and a temperature defined by the horizon. They are analogues of the flat spacetime bounces, independent of Euclidean time, that correspond to thermal production of a critical bubble. If either the strength of gravity or the false vacuum energy are increased, with all other parameters held fixed, the bounces approach, and eventually merge with, the Hawking-Moss solution. Increasing the height of the barrier separating the true and false vacuum, and thus the tension in the bubble wall, causes the center of the bubble wall to approach, but never reach, the horizon. This is in contrast with the prediction of the thin-wall approximation, which inevitably breaks down when the wall is near the horizon. Our numerical results show that the Euclidean action of our solutions is always greater than that of the corresponding O(4)-symmetric Coleman-De Luccia bounce.

22 pages, 8 figures; minor corrections to Eqs. (2.2), (4.8), and (4.9); results and conclusions unchanged

References in corpus (6)

• The Gravitational Hamiltonian, Action, Entropy, and Surface Terms
• Black Hole Entropy and the Dimensional Continuation of the Gauss-Bonnet Theorem
• Thermal derivation of the Coleman-De Luccia tunneling prescription
• Oscillating bounce solutions and vacuum tunneling in de Sitter spacetime
• Decay of de Sitter vacua by thermal activation
• Coincident brane nucleation and the neutralization of Λ

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• Sequestering effects on and of vacuum decay
• Black Holes, Oscillating Instantons, and the Hawking-Moss transition
• Standard Model vacuum decay in a de Sitter Background
• Zoology of instanton solutions in flat potential barriers
• Cosmological consequences of Omnia Sequestra
• Vacuum decay and bubble nucleation in $f(R)$ gravity
• Gravitational waves from the vacuum decay with LISA
• Positive curvature and scalar field tunneling in the landscape
• Ground states of semilinear elliptic equations
• Topics in vacuum decay (Ph.D Thesis)
• The WKB approximation and tunneling in theories with non-canonical kinetic terms
• Vacuum bubbles from cosmic ripples
• Instanton interaction in de Sitter spacetime