2005/01/19 by Andrés Gomberoff, Andres Gomberoff, Marc Henneaux +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.71.063509
published as Phys.Rev. D71 (2005) 063509 · 11 pages, 6 figures
arxiv created 2005/01/19 · openalex publication_date 2005/03/10 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the decay of the cosmological constant in two spacetime dimensions through production of pairs. We show that the same nucleation process looks as quantum-mechanical tunneling (instanton) to one Killing observer and as thermal activation (thermalon) to another. Thus, we find another striking example of the deep interplay between gravity, thermodynamics and quantum mechanics which becomes apparent in presence of horizons.