We investigate in detail the properties of oscillating instanton solutions discussed recently in the literature. We find that the solutions with N nodes contain exactly N homogeneous negative modes in their spectrum of linear perturbations. The existence of extra negative modes for the N > 1 solutions suggest that they are not final state physical objects resulting from tunneling, but rather unstable intermediate thermal configurations. By contrast, the single negative mode for the N = 1 instanton confirms its interpretation as mediating the curved-space tunneling between vacua with equal energy densities.
In this paper, we study Einstein gravity with a minimally coupled scalar field accompanied with a potential, assuming an O(4) symmetric metric ansatz. We call an Euclidean instanton is to be an oscillating instanton, if there exists a point where the derivative of the scale factor and the scalar field vanish at the same time. Then we can prove that the oscillating instanton can be analytically continued, both as inhomogeneous and homogeneous tunneling channels. Here, we especially focus on the possibility of a homogeneous tunneling channel. For the existence of such an instanton, we have to as…
Static oscillating bounces in Schwarzschild de Sitter spacetime are investigated. The oscillating bounce with many oscillations gives a super-thick bubble wall, for which the total vacuum energy increases while the mass of the black hole decreases due to the conservation of Arnowitt-Deser-Misner (ADM) mass. We show that the transition rate of such an "up-tunneling" consuming the seed black hole is higher than that of the Hawking-Moss transition. The correspondence of analyses in the static and global coordinates in the Euclidean de Sitter space is also investigated.
A Fubini instanton is a bounce solution which describes the decay of a vacuum state located at the top of the tachyonic potential {\it via} the tunneling without a barrier. We investigate various types of Fubini instantons of a self-gravitating scalar field under a tachyonic quartic potential. With gravity taken into account, we show there exist various types of unexpected solutions including oscillating bounce solutions. We present numerically oscillating Fubini bounce solutions in anti-de Sitter and de Sitter spaces. We construct the parametric phase diagrams of the solutions, which is the e…
We investigate oscillating instanton solutions of a self-gravitating scalar field between degenerate vacua. We show that there exist O(4)-symmetric oscillating solutions in a de Sitter background. The geometry of this solution is finite and preserves the $Z_{2}$ symmetry. The nontrivial solution corresponding to tunneling is possible only if the effect of gravity is taken into account. We present numerical solutions of this instanton, including the phase diagram of solutions in terms of the parameters of the present work and the variation of energy densities. Our solutions can be interpreted a…
The usual (type A) thin-wall Coleman-de Luccia instanton is made by a bigger-than-half sphere of the false vacuum and a smaller-than-half sphere of the true vacuum. It has a the standard O(4) symmetric negative mode associated with changing the size of false vacuum region. On the other hand, the type B instanton, made by two smaller-than-half spheres, was believed to have lost this negative mode. We argue that such belief is misguided due to an over-restriction on Euclidean path integral. We introduce the idea of a "purely geometric junction" to visualize why such restriction could be removed,…
We perform a detailed study of the existence and the properties of O(4)-invariant instanton solutions in Einstein-scalar theory in the presence of flat potential barriers, i.e. barriers where the second derivative of the potential is small at the top of the barrier. We find a whole zoo of solutions: Hawking-Moss, Coleman-De Luccia (CdL), oscillating instantons, asymmetric CdL as well as other non-standard CdL-like solutions with additional negative modes in their spectrum of fluctuations. Our work shows how these different branches of solutions are connected to each other via "critical" instan…
We study the semiclassical fluctuation problem around bounce solutions for a self-interacting scalar field in curved space. As in flat space, the fluctuation problem separates into partial waves labeled by an integer l, and we determine the large l behavior of the fluctuation determinants, a quantity needed to define a finite fluctuation prefactor. We also show that while the Coleman-De Luccia bounce solution has a single negative mode in the l=0 sector, the oscillating bounce solutions also have negative modes in partial waves higher than the s-wave, further evidence that they are not directl…
The spectrum of small perturbations about oscillating bounce solutions recently discussed in the literature is investigated. Our study supports quite intuitive and expected result: the bounce with N nodes has exactly N homogeneous negative modes. Existence of more than one negative modes makes obscure the relation of these oscillating bounce solutions to the false vacuum decay processes.
We describe a new family of thin-wall instantons, with negative tension bubble walls, that mediate tunneling between Minkowski or de Sitter vacua. Some of these instantons can have exponentially enhanced tunneling rates, and would dominate the Euclidean path integral, representing a severe non-perturbative instability in any theory which supports them. We give two constructions of these instantons in theories which are perturbatively stable, but violate the null energy condition. One construction uses a scalar field theory with higher-derivative kinetic term, and is similar to the Coleman-de L…
Positive definiteness of the quadratic part of the action of the Hawking-Turok instanton is investigated. The Euclidean quadratic action for scalar perturbations is expressed in terms of a single gauge invariant quantity $q$. The mode functions satisfy a Schrödinger type equation with a potential $U$. It is shown that the potential $U$ tends to a positive constant at the regular end of the instanton. The detailed shape of $U$ depends on the initial data of the instanton, on parameters of the background scalar field potential $V$ and on a positive integer, $p$, labeling different spherical harm…
We study the instantons describing the production of particles at the ends of codimension-one objects (strings and struts) in $(2+1)$-dimensional Minkowski and de Sitter spaces. A Minkowskian background allows only for systems with vanishing total mass, so that either negative mass particles or negative tension struts are required. On a de Sitter background, on the other hand, we find processes describing the production of string/particle systems with no negative energies involved. We also compute the probabilities of creating and of breaking an infinite cosmic string in de Sitter space. We pe…
We discuss the O(4) invariant perturbation modes of cosmological instantons. These modes are spatially homogeneous in Lorentzian spacetime and thus not relevant to density perturbations. But their properties are important in establishing the meaning of the Euclidean path integral. If negative modes are present, the Euclidean path integral is not well defined, but may nevertheless be useful in an approximate description of the decay of an unstable state. When gravitational dynamics is included, counting negative modes requires a careful treatment of the conformal factor problem. We demonstrate …
We consider the partition function for Euclidean $SU(N)$ super Yang-Mills on a squashed seven-sphere. We show that the localization locus of the partition function has instanton membrane solutions wrapping the six "fixed" three-spheres on the $\mathbb{S}^7$. The ADHM variables of these instantons are fields living on the membrane world volume. We compute their contribution by localizing the resulting three-dimensional supersymmetric field theory. In the round-sphere limit the individual instanton contributions are singular, but the singularities cancel when adding the contributions of all six …
In the absence of gravity, one can prove that tunnelling instantons exhibit exactly one negative mode in their spectrum of fluctuations. It is precisely the existence of this tunnelling negative mode that warrants an interpretation of these solutions as mediating the decay of a metastable vacuum. In the presence of gravity the situation is much more subtle, not least because of diffeomorphism invariance. New complications arise here: in particular, the kinetic term of the fluctuations can change sign somewhere along the instanton. We show that in this case the mode functions remain non-singula…
According to the positive energy conjecture of Horowitz and Myers, there is a specific supergravity solution, AdS soliton, which has minimum energy among all asymptotically locally AdS solutions with the same boundary conditions. Related to the issue of semiclassical stability of AdS soliton in the context of pure gravity with a negative cosmological constant, physical boundary conditions are determined for an instanton solution which would be responsible for vacuum decay by barrier penetration. Certain geometric properties of instantons are studied, using Hermitian differential operators. On …
We investigate the instanton solution between the degenerate vacua in curved space. We show that there exist $O(4)$-symmetric solutions not only in de Sitter but also in both flat and anti-de Sitter space. The geometry of the new type of solutions is finite and preserves the $Z_2$ symmetry. The nontrivial solution corresponding to the tunneling is possible only if gravity is taken into account. The numerical solutions as well as the analytic computations using the thin-wall approximation are presented. We expect that these solutions do not have any negative mode as in the instanton solution.
We study the negative modes of gravitational instantons representing vacuum decay in asymptotically flat space-time. We consider two different vacuum decay scenarios: the Coleman-de Luccia $\mathrm{O}(4)$-symmetric bubble, and $\mathrm{O}(3) \times \mathbb{R}$ instantons with a static black hole. In spite of the similarities between the models, we find qualitatively different behaviours. In the $\mathrm{O}(4)$-symmetric case, the number of negative modes is known to be either one or infinite, depending on the sign of the kinetic term in the quadratic action. In contrast, solving the mode equat…
We investigate a relationship between the number of the negative modes around periodic instanton solution and the type of the decay-rate transition. It is shown that for the case of first-order decay-rate transition the lowest positive mode at low energy periodic instanton becomes additional negative mode at high energy regime, while in the second-order case there is only one negative mode in the full range of energy. This kind of analysis on the negative modes makes it possible to derive the criterion for the first-order transition.
For a spherically symmetric vacuum model with a negative cosmological constant, a complex constrained instanton is considered as the seed for the quantum pair creation of Schwarzschild-anti-de Sitter black holes. The relative creation probability is found to be the exponential of the negative of the black hole entropy. The black hole entropy is known to be one quarter of the black hole horizon area. In the absence of a general no-boundary proposal for open creation, the constrained instanton approach is used in treating both the open and closed pair creations of black holes.
We study the Giddings-Strominger wormholes in string theories. We found negative modes among O(4)-symmetric fluctuations about the non-singular wormhole background. Hence the stringy wormhole contribution to the euclidean functional integral is purely imaginary. This means that the stringy wormhole is a bounce (not an instanton) and describes the nucleation and growth of wormholes in the Minkowski spacetime.
We show that $(1+2)$ nonlinear Klein-Gordon equation with negative coupling admits an exact solution which appears to be the linear superposition of the plane wave and the nonsingular rational soliton. We show that the same approach allows to construct the solution of similar properties for the Euclidean $ϕ^4$ model with broken symmetry. Interestingly, this regular solution will be of instanton type only in the $D\le 5$ Euclidean space.
We demonstrate that possession of a single negative mode is not a sufficient criterion for an instanton to mediate exponential decay. For example, de Sitter space is generically stable against decay via the Coleman-De Luccia instanton. This is due to the fact that the de Sitter Euclidean action is bounded below, allowing for an approximately de Sitter invariant false vacuum to be constructed.
It is shown that the tunneling effect in quantum cosmology is possible not only at the very beginning or the very end of the evolution, but also at the moment of maximum expansion of the universe. A positive curvature expanding Friedmann universe changes its state of evolution spontaneously and completely, {\it without} any changes in the matter content, avoiding recollapse, and falling into oscillations between the nonzero values of the scale factor. On the other hand, an oscillating nonsingular universe can tunnel spontaneously to a recollapsing regime. The probability of such kind of tunnel…
A non-negative integer labeled set of model solutions to the $\mathbb{R}$-invariant Kapustin-Witten equations on $(0,\infty)\times \mathbb{R}^2\times \mathbb{R}$ plays a central role in Edward Witten's program to interpret the colored Jones polynomial or a knot in the context of SU(2) gauge theory. This paper explains why there are $\mathbb{R}$-invariant solutions to these equations on $(0,\infty)\times \mathbb{R}^2\times \mathbb{R}$ that interpolate between two model solutions as the $(0,\infty)$ parameter increases from 0 to $\infty$ while respecting the $\mathbb{R}^2$ factor asymptotics. Th…
For a large region of parameter space involving the cosmological constant and mass parameters, we discuss fluctuating spacetime solutions that are effectively Minkowskian on large time and distance scales. Rapid, small amplitude oscillations in the scale factor have a frequency determined by the size of a negative cosmological constant. A field with modes of negative energy is required. If it is gravity that induces a coupling between the ghost-like and normal fields, we find that this results in stochastic rather than unstable behavior. The negative energy modes may also permit the existence …
