Thermal instability in a gravity-like scalar theory

TL;DR

This paper investigates the thermal stability of a gravity-like scalar theory, showing that its ground state becomes unstable above a critical temperature, with the critical point explicitly calculated at high temperature.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized scalar theory resembling gravity with a cosmological constant and analyzes its stability, providing a closed-form expression for the critical temperature.

Findings

Ground state stability depends on temperature.

Instability occurs above a specific critical temperature.

Critical temperature is explicitly calculated at high temperature.

Abstract

We study the question of stability of the ground state of a scalar theory which is a generalization of the phi^3 theory and has some similarity to gravity with a cosmological constant. We show that the ground state of the theory at zero temperature becomes unstable above a certain critical temperature, which is evaluated in closed form at high temperature.