Collapse of Vacuum Bubbles in a Vacuum

TL;DR

This paper studies the dynamics of false vacuum bubbles in de Sitter space, revealing conditions under which they collapse into black holes or form wormholes, with implications for inflationary cosmology.

Contribution

It identifies a broad parameter space where vacuum bubbles can collapse into black holes or create wormholes, expanding understanding of vacuum decay in cosmology.

Findings

Vacuum bubbles can collapse into black holes.

Vacuum bubbles can form wormholes.

Implications for inflationary physics.

Abstract

Motivated by the discovery of a plenitude of metastable vacua in a string landscape and the possibility of rapid tunneling between these vacua, we revisit the dynamics of a false vacuum bubble in a background de Sitter spacetime. We find that there exists a large parameter space that allows the bubble to collapse into a black hole or to form a wormhole. This may have interesting implications to inflationary physics.