Attractor explosions and catalyzed vacuum decay

We present a mechanism for catalyzed vacuum bubble production obtained by combining moduli stabilization with a generalized attractor phenomenon in which moduli are sourced by compact objects. This leads straightforwardly to a class of examples in which the Hawking decay process for black holes unveils a bubble of a different vacuum from the ambient one, generalizing the new end point for Hawking evaporation discovered recently by Horowitz. Catalyzed vacuum bubble production can occur for both charged and uncharged bodies, including Schwarzschild black holes for which massive particles produced in the Hawking process can trigger vacuum decay. We briefly discuss applications of this process to the population and stability of metastable vacua.

Figure 1

Three basic cases in which a compact object locally distorts the effective moduli potential.

Figure 2

In a time period $\Delta t$, the black hole (filled circle) produces a gas of massive $\psi$ particles which spreads a distance $\Delta r$ to occupy the region indicated. For the regime of parameters discussed in the text, this seeds a vacuum bubble. During the same period, the lighter $\varphi$ fluctuations disperse more rapidly and have diluted to occupy a smaller energy density over a larger region. For an appropriate window of parameters the fluctuations of light $\varphi$ particles do not wash out the bubble nucleated by the gas of massive $\psi$ particles.