Local and global gravitational aspects of domain wall space-times

Journal Article · Wed Sep 15 00:00:00 EDT 1993 · Physical Review, D (Particles Fields); (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.48.2613· OSTI ID:6278186

Cvetic, M; Griffies, S; Soleng, H H ^[1]

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1. Department of Physics, University of Pennsylvania, 209 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6396 (United States)

Local and global gravitational effects induced by eternal vacuum domain walls are studied. We concentrate on thin walls between nonequal and nonpositive cosmological constants on each side of the wall. The assumption of homogeneity, isotropy, and geodesic completeness of the space-time intrinsic to the wall as described in the comoving coordinate system and the constraint that the same symmetries hold in hypersurfaces parallel to the wall yield a general [ital Ansatz] for the line element of space-time. We restrict the problem further by demanding that the wall's surface energy density, [sigma], is positive and by requiring that the infinitely thin wall represents a thin-wall limit of kinklike scalar field configuration. These vacuum domain walls fall in three classes depending on the value of their [sigma]: (1) extreme walls with [sigma]=[sigma][sub ext] are planar, static walls corresponding to supersymmetric configurations, (2) nonextreme walls with [sigma]=[sigma][sub non][gt][sigma][sub ext] correspond to expanding bubbles with observers on either side of the wall being [ital inside] the bubble, and (3) ultraextreme walls with [sigma]=[sigma][sub ultra][lt][sigma][sub ext] represent the bubbles of false vacuum decay. On the sides with less negative cosmological constant, the extreme, nonextreme, and ultraextreme walls exhibit no, repulsive, and attractive effective gravitational forces,'' respectively. These gravitational forces'' are global effects not caused by local curvature. Since the nonextreme wall encloses observers on both sides, the supersymmetric system has the lowest gravitational mass accessible to outside observers. It is conjectured that similar positive mass protection occurs in all physical systems and that no finite negative mass object can exist inside the universe.

• OSTI ID: 6278186
• Journal Information: Physical Review, D (Particles Fields); (United States), Vol. 48:6; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
GRAVITATIONAL RADIATION
GLOBAL ASPECTS
LOCAL RADIATION EFFECTS
BUBBLES
CONSTRAINTS
COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT
GEODESICS
ISOTROPY
SCALAR FIELDS
SPACE-TIME
SURFACE ENERGY
SYMMETRY
BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS
BIOLOGICAL RADIATION EFFECTS
ENERGY
FREE ENERGY
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
RADIATION EFFECTS
RADIATIONS
SURFACE PROPERTIES
THERMODYNAMIC PROPERTIES
661310* - Relativity & Gravitation- (1992-)