1203.1619 (Thomas C. Bachlechner)

Decoherence delays false vacuum decay    [PDF]

Thomas C. Bachlechner

We show that gravitational interactions between thermal de Sitter photons and a nucleating Coleman-de Luccia bubble lead to efficient decoherence and strongly suppress metastable vacuum decay for bubbles that are small compared to the Hubble radius. The vacuum decay rate including gravity and photon interactions has the exponential scaling $\Gamma\sim \Gamma_{0}^{2}$, where $\Gamma_{0}$ is the Coleman-de Luccia decay rate neglecting photon interactions. This strong decoherence effect is a generic consequence of gravitational interactions with light external modes. We argue that efficient decoherence does not occur for the case of Hawking-Moss decay. This observation is consistent with requirements set by Poincare recurrence in de Sitter space.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.1619