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Black holes as bubble nucleation sites

Journal of High Energy Physics volume 2014, Article number: 81 (2014) Cite this article

Abstract

We consider the effect of inhomogeneities on the rate of false vacuum decay. Modelling the inhomogeneity by a black hole, we construct explicit Euclidean instantons which describe the nucleation of a bubble of true vacuum centred on the inhomogeneity. We find that inhomogeneity significantly enhances the nucleation rate over that of the Coleman-de Luccia instanton — the black hole acts as a nucleation site for the bubble. The effect is larger than previously believed due to the contributions to the action from conical singularities. For a sufficiently low initial mass, the original black hole is replaced by flat space during this process, as viewed by a single causal patch observer. Increasing the initial mass, we find a critical value above which a black hole remnant survives the process. This resulting black hole can have a higher mass than the original black hole, but always has a lower entropy. We compare the process to bubble-to-bubble transitions, where there is a semi-classical Lorentzian description in the WKB approximation.

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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits any use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematical Sciences and Centre for Particle Theory, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, U.K.

    Ruth Gregory & Benjamin Withers

  2. Perimeter Institute, 31 Caroline Street North, Waterloo, ON, N2L 2Y5, Canada

    Ruth Gregory

  3. School of Mathematics and Statistics, Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, U.K.

    Ian G. Moss

  4. Mathematical Sciences and STAG research centre, University of Southampton, Higheld, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, U.K.

    Benjamin Withers

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  1. Ruth Gregory
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  2. Ian G. Moss
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Correspondence to Ian G. Moss.

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ArXiv ePrint: 1401.0017

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Gregory, R., Moss, I.G. & Withers, B. Black holes as bubble nucleation sites. J. High Energ. Phys. 2014, 81 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP03(2014)081

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Keywords

  • Cosmology of Theories beyond the SM
  • Black Holes
  • Solitons Monopoles and Instantons