Vacuum Decay Constraints on a Cosmological Scalar Field | Zendy

Jeremy Heyl | Zendy; Abraham Loeb | Zendy

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Vacuum Decay Constraints on a Cosmological Scalar Field

Author(s) -

Jeremy Heyl,

Abraham Loeb

Publication year - 2002

Publication title -

physical review letters

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 3.688

H-Index - 673

eISSN - 1079-7114

pISSN - 0031-9007

DOI - 10.1103/physrevlett.88.121302

Subject(s) - physics , false vacuum , scalar field , ekpyrotic universe , dark energy , vacuum expectation value , bubble , vacuum energy , universe , planck , particle physics , scalar (mathematics) , planck mass , metric expansion of space , quantum mechanics , cosmology , gravitation , higgs boson , mechanics , geometry , mathematics

If the potential of a scalar field, Phi, which currently provides the ``darkenergy'' of the universe, has a negative minimum -M_0^4, thenquantum-mechanical fluctuations could nucleate a bubble of Phi at a negativevalue of the potential. The bubble would expand at the speed of light. Giventhat no such bubble enveloped us in the past, we find that any minimum inV(Phi) must be separated from the current Phi value by more than min{1.5M_0,0.21M_Pl}, where M_Pl is the Planck mass. We also show that vacuum decayrenders a cyclic or ekpyrotic universe with M_0^4 > 10^{-10}M_Pl^4, untenable.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figur

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