Johnson, Matthew C. and Yang, I-Sheng (2010) Escaping the crunch: Gravitational effects in classical transitions. Physical Review D, 82 (6). Art. No. 065023. ISSN 2470-0010. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.82.065023. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20101022-101219288
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Abstract
During eternal inflation, a landscape of vacua can be populated by the nucleation of bubbles. These bubbles inevitably collide, and collisions sometimes displace the field into a new minimum in a process known as a classical transition. In this paper, we examine some new features of classical transitions that arise when gravitational effects are included. Using the junction condition formalism, we study the conditions for energy conservation in detail, and solve explicitly for the types of allowed classical transition geometries. We show that the repulsive nature of domain walls, and the de Sitter expansion associated with a positive energy minimum, can allow for classical transitions to vacua of higher energy than that of the colliding bubbles. Transitions can be made out of negative or zero energy (terminal) vacua to a de Sitter phase, restarting eternal inflation, and populating new vacua. However, the classical transition cannot produce vacua with energy higher than the original parent vacuum, which agrees with previous results on the construction of pockets of false vacuum. We briefly comment on the possible implications of these results for various measure proposals in eternal inflation.
Item Type: | Article | |||||||||
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Additional Information: | © 2010 The American Physical Society. Received 2 July 2010; published 24 September 2010. The authors wish to thank A. Aguirre, L. Hui, and E. Lim for helpful conversations. We extend our gratitude to R. Easther and E. Lim for organizing the ‘‘Bubble Collisions and Lattice Simulation’’ workshop at Columbia University where this work was initiated, and A. Brown for invaluable input at the early stages of this project. M. J.’s research is funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and he thanks Columbia University for their hospitality while portions of this work were completed. I. S.Y.’s research is supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy, and he also thanks California Institute of Technology for their hospitality. | |||||||||
Group: | Caltech Theory, Moore Center for Theoretical Cosmology and Physics | |||||||||
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Issue or Number: | 6 | |||||||||
Classification Code: | PACS: 11.27.+d | |||||||||
DOI: | 10.1103/PhysRevD.82.065023 | |||||||||
Record Number: | CaltechAUTHORS:20101022-101219288 | |||||||||
Persistent URL: | https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20101022-101219288 | |||||||||
Usage Policy: | No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided. | |||||||||
ID Code: | 20483 | |||||||||
Collection: | CaltechAUTHORS | |||||||||
Deposited By: | Tony Diaz | |||||||||
Deposited On: | 24 Nov 2010 22:31 | |||||||||
Last Modified: | 09 Nov 2021 00:00 |
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