Revisiting Coleman-de Luccia transitions in the AdS regime using holography

Understand

Coleman-de Luccia processes for AdS to AdS decays in Einstein-scalar theories are studied.

• Such tunnelling processes are interpreted as vev-driven holographic RG flows of a quantum field theory on de Sitter space-time.
• These flows do not exist for generic scalar potentials, which is the holographic formulation of the fact that gravity can act to stabilise false AdS vacua.
• The existence of Coleman-de Luccia tunnelling solutions in a potential with a false AdS vacuum is found to be tied to the existence of exotic RG flows in the same potential.