Publication Abstracts
Marvel and Wesley 2008
Marvel, K., and D. Wesley, 2008: Tunneling with negative tension. J. High Energy Phys., 2008, no. 12, 34, doi:10.1088/1126-6708/2008/12/034.
We describe a new family of thin-wall instantons, with negative tension bubble walls, that mediate tunneling between Minkowski or de Sitter vacua. Some of these instantons can have exponentially enhanced tunneling rates, and would dominate the Euclidean path integral, representing a severe non-perturbative instability in any theory which supports them. We give two constructions of these instantons in theories which are perturbatively stable, but violate the null energy condition. One construction uses a scalar field theory with higher-derivative kinetic term, and is similar to the Coleman-de Luccia positive tension instanton. The other construction employs a negative-tension boundary arising from Z2 orbifolding: it resembles a ``bubble of nothing" which nucleates and grows, consuming the surrounding de Sitter or Minkowski spacetime. We explain how the spectral flow for fluctutations about the thin-wall tunneling solutions automatically protects causality, for both positive and negative tension instantons. We comment briefly on the relation of these solutions to a Kalzua-Klein ``bubble of nothing'', cosmological models relying on ghost condensates, and string theory orientifolds.
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BibTeX Citation
@article{ma08010e,
author={Marvel, K. and Wesley, D.},
title={Tunneling with negative tension},
year={2008},
journal={J. High Energy Phys.},
volume={2008},
number={12},
pages={34},
doi={10.1088/1126-6708/2008/12/034},
}
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RIS Citation
TY - JOUR ID - ma08010e AU - Marvel, K. AU - Wesley, D. PY - 2008 TI - Tunneling with negative tension JA - J. High Energy Phys. VL - 2008 IS - 12 SP - 34 DO - 10.1088/1126-6708/2008/12/034 ER -
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