Abstract
Theories with compact extra dimensions are sometimes unstable to decay into a bubble of nothing—an instability resulting in the destruction of spacetime. We investigate the existence of these bubbles in theories where the moduli fields that set the size of the extra dimensions are stabilized at a positive vacuum energy—a necessary ingredient of any theory that aspires to describe the real world. Using bottom-up methods, and focusing on a five-dimensional toy model, we show that four-dimensional de Sitter vacua admit bubbles of nothing for a wide class of stabilizing potentials. We show that, unlike ordinary Coleman-De Luccia tunneling, the corresponding decay rate remains non-zero in the limit of vanishing vacuum energy. Potential implications include a lower bound on the size of compactified dimensions.
- Received 6 July 2021
- Accepted 15 October 2021
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.104.L121701
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.
Published by the American Physical Society