Abstract
We study false vacuum decay catalyzed by black holes. We consider a toy two-dimensional model of a scalar field with an unstable potential in the background of a dilaton black hole. A realistic black hole in four dimensions possesses the potential barrier for linear field perturbations. We model this barrier — the greybody factor — for spherically-symmetric perturbations in the toy model by adding a coupling between the scalar field and dilaton. We compute analytically the decay rate for the black hole in thermal equilibrium (Hartle-Hawking state) and for the radiating black hole in empty space (Unruh state). Our results show that, contrary to the Hartle-Hawking vacuum, the decay probability of the Unruh vacuum remains exponentially suppressed at all black hole temperatures. We argue that this result holds also in four dimensions.
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Shkerin, A., Sibiryakov, S. Black hole induced false vacuum decay: the role of greybody factors. J. High Energ. Phys. 2022, 161 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP08(2022)161
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP08(2022)161