Separation Distribution of Vacuum Bubbles in de Sitter Space
arXiv:hep-ph/0207275 · doi:10.1016/S0370-2693(02)02662-X
Abstract
We compute the probability distribution of the invariant separation between nucleation centers of colliding true vacuum bubbles arising from the decay of a false de Sitter space vacuum. We find that even in the limit of a very small nucleation rate per unit Hubble volume the production of widely separated bubble pairs is suppressed. This distribution is of particular relevance for the recently proposed ``colliding bubble braneworld'' scenario, in which the value of Omega_k (the contribution of negative spatial curvature to the cosmological density parameter) is determined by the invariant separation of the colliding bubble pair. We also consider the probability of a collision with a `third' bubble.
15 pages REVTEX, 2 Postscript figures