Nothing really matters

Abstract

We study non-perturbative instabilities of AdS spacetime in General Relativity with a cosmological constant in arbitrary dimensions. In this simple setup we explicitly construct a class of gravitational instantons generalizing Witten's bubble of nothing. We calculate the corresponding Euclidean action and show that its change is finite. The expansion of these bubbles is described by a lower-dimensional de Sitter geometry within a non-compact foliation of the background spacetime. Moreover we discuss the existence of covariantly constant spinors as a possible topological obstruction for such decays to occur. This mechanism is further connected to the stability of supersymmetric vacua in string theory.

22 pages, 2 appendices

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Cited by in corpus (19)

• de Sitter in non-supersymmetric string theories: no-go theorems and brane-worlds
• Supersymmetric solitons in gauged $\mathcal{N}=8$ supergravity
• Dynamical Cobordism and the Beginning of Time: Supercritical Strings and Tachyon Condensation
• On de Sitter Spacetime and String Theory
• Supersymmetry Breaking and Stability in String Vacua: brane dynamics, bubbles and the swampland
• Revisiting Dudas-Mourad compactifications
• Holographic description of SCFT${}_5$ compactifications
• Looking for structure in the cobordism conjecture
• de Sitter Decays to Infinity
• Dark bubbles and black holes
• Bubble needs strings
• Stringy Bubbles Solve de Sitter Troubles
• Charting the Conformal Manifold of Holographic CFT${}_2$'s
• Searching for Coleman-de Luccia bubbles in AdS compactifications
• An infinity of black holes
• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Swampland: The Cosmologist's Handbook to the string-theoretical Swampland Programme
• Morse-Bott inequalities, Topology Change and Cobordisms to Nothing
• Non-supersymmetric heterotic strings on $Ad{S}_4\times S^3\times S^3$
• At the End of the World: Local Dynamical Cobordism