2017/07/25 by Anders Andreassen, William Frost, Matthew D. Schwartz · 1 voice · 136 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Instanton #Invariant (physics) #Mathematical physics #Mathematics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Scale (ratio) #Scale invariance #Statistics #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.97.056006
published in Physical review. D/Physical review. D. 97(5) (American Physical Society) · Typos corrected, numbers updated
openalex publication_date 2018/03/12 · arxiv created 2018/05/02 · arxiv updated 2018/05/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
In a classically scale-invariant quantum field theory, tunneling rates are infrared divergent due to the existence of instantons of any size. While one expects such divergences to be resolved by quantum effects, it has been unclear how higher-loop corrections can resolve a problem appearing already at one loop. With a careful power counting, we uncover a series of loop contributions that dominate over the one-loop result and sum all the necessary terms. We also clarify previously incomplete treatments of related issues pertaining to global symmetries, gauge fixing, and finite mass effects. In addition, we produce exact closedform solutions for the functional determinants over scalars, fermions, and vector bosons around the scaleinvariant bounce, demonstrating manifest gauge invariance in the vector case. With these problems solved, we produce the first complete calculation of the lifetime of our Universe: 10 139 years. With 95% confidence, we expect our Universe to last more than 10 58 years. The uncertainty is part experimental uncertainty on the top quark mass and on s and part theory uncertainty from electroweak threshold corrections. Using our complete result, we provide phase diagrams in the m t /m h and the m t / s planes, with uncertainty bands. To rule out absolute stability to 3 confidence, the uncertainty on the top quark pole mass would have to be pushed below 250 MeV or the uncertainty on s m Z pushed below 0.00025.