de Sitter Decays to Infinity

Understand

Bubbles of nothing are a class of vacuum decay processes present in some theories with compactified extra dimensions.

• We investigate the existence and properties of bubbles of nothing in models where the scalar pseudomoduli controlling the size of the extra dimensions are stabilized at positive vacuum energy, which is a necessary feature of any realistic model.
• We map the construction of bubbles of nothing to a four-dimensional Coleman-De Luccia problem and establish necessary conditions on the asymptotic behavior of the scalar potential for the existence of suitable solutions.
• We perform detailed analyses in the context of five-dimensional theories with metastable $\text{dS}_4 \times S^1$ vacua, using analytic approximations and numerical methods to calculate the decay rate.