2006/12/31 by Puneet Batra, Matthew Kleban · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #astro-ph #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.76.103510
published as Phys.Rev.D76:103510,2007 · 19 pages, 3 figures; references added, typos corrected
arxiv created 2007/06/28 · openalex publication_date 2007/11/05 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We investigate the cosmological signatures of instantons mediating tunneling between de Sitter minima. For generic potentials the Coleman-de Luccia instanton does not necessarily exist; when it does not, the instanton which contributes to the decay rate is the trivial constant solution, known as the Hawking-Moss instanton. With the aid of a toy model we interpret this solution and describe the resulting cosmology. In neither the Coleman-de Luccia nor Hawking-Moss case can the resulting cosmology be closed. An observation of significant positive curvature would therefore rule out the possibility that our universe arose from any transition from a neighboring minimum in the string-theory landscape.