Metastable Vacua in Brane Worlds

TL;DR

This paper investigates vacuum decay in five-dimensional brane world models with metastable vacua, analyzing bounce solutions in flat and warped geometries, and explores how warped regions can prolong false vacuum lifetimes, with implications for supersymmetric models.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of vacuum decay in brane worlds, highlighting how warped geometries can significantly extend false vacuum stability, relevant for supersymmetric theories.

Findings

Warped regions can indefinitely increase false vacuum lifetime.

Bounce solutions differ between flat and warped geometries.

Application to metastable vacua in supersymmetric brane-worlds.

Abstract

We analyze vacuum decay in brane world setups, where a free scalar field in five dimensions has a localized potential admitting metastable vacua. We study in particular the bounce solution and its properties in flat and warped spaces. In the latter case, placing into a deeply warped region the term in the potential that lifts the vacuum degeneracy, can increase indefinitely the lifetime of the false vacuum. We discuss the application to metastable vacua in supersymmetric brane-world constructions.