This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site you agree to our use of cookies. To find out more, see our Privacy and Cookies policy.
Close this notification
Find article
The International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) logo

Click here to close this overlay, or press the "Escape" key on your keyboard.

The International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) logo

The International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) was founded in 1978 and was the first institution in Italy to promote post-graduate courses leading to a Doctor Philosophiae (or PhD) degree. A centre of excellence among Italian and international universities, the school has around 65 teachers, 100 post docs and 245 PhD students, and is located in Trieste, in a campus of more than 10 hectares with wonderful views over the Gulf of Trieste.

SISSA hosts a very high-ranking, large and multidisciplinary scientific research output. The scientific papers produced by its researchers are published in high impact factor, well-known international journals, and in many cases in the world's most prestigious scientific journals such as Nature and Science. Over 900 students have so far started their careers in the field of mathematics, physics and neuroscience research at SISSA.

Visit www.sissa.it

.

http://www.sissa.it/
The following article is OPEN ACCESS

Schwinger effect in de Sitter space

, , , , , and

Published 10 April 2014 • , ,

Download Article PDF

1090 Total downloads

Share this article

Article information
Author e-mails

mfroeb@ffn.ub.edu

jaume.garriga@ub.edu

sugumi.kanno@uct.ac.za

misao@yukawa.kyoto-u.ac.jp

jiro@phys.sci.kobe-u.ac.jp

tanaka@yukawa.kyoto-u.ac.jp

vilenkin@cosmos.phy.tufts.edu

Author affiliations

a Departament de Física Fonamental i Institut de Ciències del Cosmos, Universitat de Barcelona, Martí i Franquès 1, 08028 Barcelona, Spain

b Laboratory for Quantum Gravity & Strings and Astrophysics, Cosmology & Gravity Center, Department of Mathematics & Applied Mathematics, University of Cape Town, Private Bag, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa

c Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan

d Department of Physics, Kobe University, Kobe 657-8501, Japan

e Department of Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan

f Institute of Cosmology, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts 02155, U.S.A.

Dates

Received 27 January 2014
Accepted 6 March 2014
Published

Citation

Markus B. Fröb et al JCAP04(2014)009

Create citation alert

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2014/04/009

E-print

http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.4137

Buy this article in print

Journal RSS feed

1475-7516/2014/04/009

Abstract

We consider Schwinger pair production in 1+1 dimensional de Sitter space, filled with a constant electric field E. This can be thought of as a model for describing false vacuum decay beyond the semiclassical approximation, where pairs of a quantum field phgr of mass m and charge e play the role of vacuum bubbles. We find that the adiabatic ``in" vacuum associated with the flat chart develops a space-like expectation value for the current J, which manifestly breaks the de Sitter invariance of the background fields. We derive a simple expression for J(E), showing that both ``upward" and ``downward" tunneling contribute to the build-up of the current. For heavy fields, with m2 Gt eE,H2, the current is exponentially suppressed, in agreement with the results of semiclassical instanton methods. Here, H is the inverse de Sitter radius. On the other hand, light fields with m Lt H lead to a phenomenon of infrared hyperconductivity, where a very small electric field mHlesssimeE Lt H2 leads to a very large current J ~ H3/E. We also show that all Hadamard states for phgr necessarily break de Sitter invariance. Finally, we comment on the role of initial conditions, and ``persistence of memory" effects.

Export citation and abstract BibTeX RIS

cc-by

Article funded by SCOAP. Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

References

  • [1]
    I.Y. Kobzarev, L.B. Okun and M.B. Voloshin, 1975 Bubbles in Metastable Vacuum Sov. J. Nucl. Phys. 20 644
  •  
    I.Y. Kobzarev, L.B. Okun and M.B. Voloshin, 1974 Yad. Fiz. 20 1229
  • [2]
    S.R. Coleman, 1977 The Fate of the False Vacuum. 1. Semiclassical Theory, Phys. Rev. D 15 2929 [Erratum ibid D 16 (1977) 1248]

    Crossref

  • [3]
    S.R. Coleman and F. De Luccia, 1980 Gravitational Effects on and of Vacuum Decay, Phys. Rev. D 21 3305

    Crossref

  • [4]
    A.D. Linde, 1983 Decay of the False Vacuum at Finite Temperature, Nucl. Phys. B 216 421 [Erratum ibid B 223 (1983) 544]

    Crossref

  • [5]
    J. Garriga, D. Schwartz-Perlov, A. Vilenkin and S. Winitzki, 2006 Probabilities in the inflationary multiverse J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 2006 01 017 [hep-th/0509184]

    IOPsciencePreprint

  • [6]
    S.M. Carroll, M.C. Johnson and L. Randall, 2009 Dynamical compactification from de Sitter space J. High Energy Phys. JHEP11(2009)094 [0904.3115]

    IOPsciencePreprint

  • [7]
    J.J. Blanco-Pillado, D. Schwartz-Perlov and A. Vilenkin, 2010 Transdimensional Tunneling in the Multiverse J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 2010 05 005 [0912.4082]

    IOPsciencePreprint

  • [8]
    J.J. Blanco-Pillado and M.P. Salem, 2010 Observable effects of anisotropic bubble nucleation J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 2010 07 007 [1003.0663]

    IOPsciencePreprint

  • [9]
    M.P. Salem, 2010 A signature of anisotropic bubble collisions, Phys. Rev. D 82 063530 [1005.5311]

    CrossrefPreprint

  • [10]
    M. Kleban and M. Schillo, 2012 Spatial Curvature Falsifies Eternal Inflation J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 2012 06 029 [1202.5037]

    IOPsciencePreprint

  • [11]
    J. Garriga, A.H. Guth and A. Vilenkin, 2007 Eternal inflation, bubble collisions and the persistence of memory, Phys. Rev. D 76 123512 [hep-th/0612242]

    CrossrefPreprint

  • [12]
    M. Kleban, T.S. Levi and K. Sigurdson, 2013 Observing the Multiverse with Cosmic Wakes, Phys. Rev. D 87 041301 [1109.3473]

    CrossrefPreprint

  • [13]
    M.P. Salem, P. Saraswat and E. Shaghoulian, 2013 Gravity waves from cosmic bubble collisions J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 2013 02 019 [1210.4165]

    IOPsciencePreprint

  • [14]
    C.L. Wainwright, M.C. Johnson, H.V. Peiris, A. Aguirre, L. Lehner and S.L. Liebling, 2014 Simulating the universe(s): from cosmic bubble collisions to cosmological observables with numerical relativity J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 2014 03 030 [1312.1357]

    IOPsciencePreprint

  • [15]
    J. Garriga, S. Kanno, M. Sasaki, J. Soda and A. Vilenkin, 2012 Observer dependence of bubble nucleation and Schwinger pair production J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 2012 12 006 [1208.1335]

    IOPsciencePreprint

  • [16]
    J. Garriga, S. Kanno and T. Tanaka, 2013 Rest frame of bubble nucleation J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 2013 06 034 [1304.6681]

    IOPsciencePreprint

  • [17]
    P.R. Anderson and E. Mottola, On the Instability of Global de Sitter Space to Particle Creation, [1310.0030]

    Preprint

  • [18]
    P.R. Anderson and E. Mottola, Quantum Vacuum Instability of `Eternal' de Sitter Space, [1310.1963]

    Preprint

  • [19]
    T.D. Cohen and D.A. McGady, 2008 The Schwinger mechanism revisited, Phys. Rev. D 78 036008 [0807.1117]

    CrossrefPreprint

  • [20]
    J. Garriga, 1994 Pair production by an electric field in (1+1)-dimensional de Sitter space, Phys. Rev. D 49 6343

    Crossref

  • [21]
    J. Garriga, 1994 Nucleation rates in flat and curved space, Phys. Rev. D 49 6327 [hep-ph/9308280]

    CrossrefPreprint

  • [22]
    K.-M. Lee and E.J. Weinberg, 1987 Decay of the True Vacuum in Curved Space-time, Phys. Rev. D 36 1088

    Crossref

  • [23]
    J. Garriga and A. Vilenkin, 2013 Watchers of the multiverse J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 2013 05 037 [1210.7540]

    IOPsciencePreprint

  • [24]
    J. Garriga and A. Vilenkin, 1998 Recycling universe, Phys. Rev. D 57 2230 [astro-ph/9707292]

    CrossrefPreprint

  • [25]
    B. Allen, 1985 Vacuum States in de Sitter Space, Phys. Rev. D 32 3136

    Crossref

  • [26]
    A. Borde, A.H. Guth and A. Vilenkin, 2003 Inflationary space-times are incompletein past directions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90 151301 [gr-qc/0110012]

    CrossrefPreprint

  • [27]
    S.P. Kim and D.N. Page, 2008 Schwinger Pair Production in dS2 and AdS2, Phys. Rev. D 78 103517 [0803.2555]

    CrossrefPreprint

  • [28]
    R. Bousso, A. Maloney and A. Strominger, 2002 Conformal vacua and entropy in de Sitter space, Phys. Rev. D 65 104039 [hep-th/0112218]

    CrossrefPreprint

Export references: BibTeX RIS