Nothing really matters
Giuseppe Dibitetto, Nicolò Petri, Marjorie Schillo
2020Journal of High Energy Physics29 citationsDOIOpen Access PDF Abstract
Abstract We study non-perturbative instabilities of AdS spacetime in General Relativity with a cosmological constant in arbitrary dimensions. In this simple setup we explicitly construct a class of gravitational instantons generalizing Witten’s bubble of nothing. We calculate the corresponding Euclidean action and show that its change is finite. The expansion of these bubbles is described by a lower-dimensional de Sitter geometry within a non- compact foliation of the background spacetime. Moreover we discuss the existence of covariantly constant spinors as a possible topological obstruction for such decays to occur. This mechanism is further connected to the stability of supersymmetric vacua in string theory.
Topics & Concepts
PhysicsCosmological constantSpacetimeInstantonTheoretical physicsDe Sitter universeEuclidean geometryMathematical physicsGeneral relativitySpinorString theoryConstant (computer programming)Superstring theoryAction (physics)String (physics)Cosmic censorship hypothesisFoliation (geology)Anti-de Sitter spaceDiffeomorphismGravitationClassical mechanicsEffective actionNothingClass (philosophy)De Sitter spaceFalse vacuumSimple (philosophy)Space timeUniverseSpace (punctuation)SupergravityMetric expansion of spaceClosed timelike curveMinkowski spacePropagatorde Sitter–Schwarzschild metricStability (learning theory)Boundary (topology)Special relativityKilling vector fieldBlack Holes and Theoretical PhysicsCosmology and Gravitation TheoriesNoncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories