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Title: Positive curvature and scalar field tunneling in the landscape

Abstract

We present a model of vacuum tunneling through a classically forbidden region where a scalar field changes its value simultaneously over the entire volume of a (meta)stable ancestor vacuum with spherical curvature. The tunneling leaves the geometry unchanged but rearranges the energetic contributions of the matter sources, leading to an inflating solution with residual positive curvature. We show that there exists a parametric regime where this solution is self-consistent and dominates the overall tunneling rate. We conclude that an experimental detection of positive curvature, while not necessarily likely, therefore does not rule out the possibility that our present observer patch originated from semiclassical vacuum tunneling in a string or field theoretic landscape.

Authors:
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States); Univ. of California, San Diego, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC); National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); National Science Foundation (NSF)
OSTI Identifier:
1491777
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1610195
Grant/Contract Number:  
FG02-92ER40699; SC001194; SC0009919; NNX10AN14G; PHY-1620610
Resource Type:
Published Article
Journal Name:
Physical Review D
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Name: Physical Review D Journal Volume: 99 Journal Issue: 2; Journal ID: ISSN 2470-0010
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY; astronomy & astrophysics; physics; evolution of the Universe; field & string theory models & techniques; quantum field in curved spacetime

Citation Formats

Horn, Bart. Positive curvature and scalar field tunneling in the landscape. United States: N. p., 2019. Web. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.99.025010.
Horn, Bart. Positive curvature and scalar field tunneling in the landscape. United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.99.025010
Horn, Bart. Wed . "Positive curvature and scalar field tunneling in the landscape". United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.99.025010.
@article{osti_1491777,
title = {Positive curvature and scalar field tunneling in the landscape},
author = {Horn, Bart},
abstractNote = {We present a model of vacuum tunneling through a classically forbidden region where a scalar field changes its value simultaneously over the entire volume of a (meta)stable ancestor vacuum with spherical curvature. The tunneling leaves the geometry unchanged but rearranges the energetic contributions of the matter sources, leading to an inflating solution with residual positive curvature. We show that there exists a parametric regime where this solution is self-consistent and dominates the overall tunneling rate. We conclude that an experimental detection of positive curvature, while not necessarily likely, therefore does not rule out the possibility that our present observer patch originated from semiclassical vacuum tunneling in a string or field theoretic landscape.},
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevD.99.025010},
journal = {Physical Review D},
number = 2,
volume = 99,
place = {United States},
year = {2019},
month = {1}
}

Journal Article:
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.99.025010

Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 1 work
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Figures / Tables:

FIG. 1 FIG. 1: The effective potential for different values of the scale factor. $ϕ_i$ is the local minimum on the left, and $ϕ_f$ is on the right. Green: a = amin, Blue: a = amax. Dashed red: a < amin (classically forbidden).

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Figures / Tables found in this record:

    Figures/Tables have been extracted from DOE-funded journal article accepted manuscripts.