Dynamical emergence of the Universe into the false vacuum

Johann Rafelski, Jeremiah Birrell

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

We study how the hot Universe evolves and acquires the prevailing vacuum state, demonstrating that in specific conditions which are believed to apply, the Universe becomes frozen into the state with the smallest value of Higgs vacuum field v=〈 h〉, even if this is not the state of lowest energy. This supports the false vacuum dark energy Λ-model. Under several likely hypotheses we determine the temperature in the evolution of the Universe at which two vacuua v1, v2 can swap between being true and false. We evaluate the dynamical surface pressure on domain walls between low and high mass vaccua due to the presence of matter and show that the low mass state remains the preferred vacuum of the Universe.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number035
JournalJournal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Volume2015
Issue number11
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 23 2015
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • cosmological phase transitions
  • dark energy theory
  • particle physics-cosmology connection

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics

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