Dynamical Emergence of the Universe into the False Vacuum

Abstract

We study how the hot Universe evolves and acquires the prevailing vacuum state, demonstrating that in specific conditions which are believed to apply, the Universe becomes frozen into the state with the smallest value of Higgs vacuum field $v=⟨h⟩$, even if this is not the state of lowest energy. This supports the false vacuum dark energy $\Lambda$-model. Under several likely hypotheses we determine the temperature in the evolution of the Universe at which two vacuua $v_1,v_2$ can swap between being true and false. We evaluate the dynamical surface pressure on domain walls between low and high mass vaccua due to the presence of matter and show that the low mass state remains the preferred vacuum of the Universe.

in press at JCAP; v2 abbreviated to 14 pages -please consult v1 for the discussion of free-streaming particles (neutrinos and dark matter) and some detail of vacuum swap conditions to be presented elsewhere

References in corpus (9)

• Precise determination of the mass of the Higgs boson and tests of compatibility of its couplings with the standard model predictions using proton collisions at 7 and 8 TeV
• Cosmological implications of the Higgs mass measurement
• The Probable Fate of the Standard Model
• The cosmological Higgstory of the vacuum instability
• The lifetime of the electroweak vacuum and sensitivity to Planck scale physics
• Top mass determination, Higgs inflation, and vacuum stability
• Probable or Improbable Universe? Correlating Electroweak Vacuum Instability with the Scale of Inflation
• Is a Higgs Vacuum Instability Fatal for High-Scale Inflation?
• Electroweak vacuum stability and finite quadratic radiative corrections

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Cosmological phase transitions: from perturbative particle physics to gravitational waves
• Higgs Criticality beyond the Standard Model
• Quintessence and false vacuum: Two sides of the same coin?