Decoherence delays false vacuum decay

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that gravitational interactions with thermal modes can cause decoherence that significantly delays false vacuum decay, especially for small bubbles, through a quantum Zeno effect, altering decay rates in de Sitter space.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mechanism where gravitational interactions induce decoherence, delaying vacuum decay and modifying decay rates in de Sitter space.

Findings

Decoherence can suppress vacuum decay for small bubbles.

Decay rate scales as the square of the Coleman-de Luccia rate.

Thermal radiation induces a quantum Zeno effect delaying decay.

Abstract

We show that gravitational interactions between massless thermal modes and a nucleating Coleman-de Luccia bubble may lead to efficient decoherence and strongly suppress metastable vacuum decay for bubbles that are small compared to the Hubble radius. The vacuum decay rate including gravity and thermal photon interactions has the exponential scaling $\Gamma\sim\Gamma_{CDL}^{2}$, where $\Gamma_{CDL}$ is the Coleman-de Luccia decay rate neglecting photon interactions. For the lowest metastable initial state an efficient quantum Zeno effect occurs due to thermal radiation of temperatures as low as the de Sitter temperature. This strong decoherence effect is a consequence of gravitational interactions with light external mode. We argue that efficient decoherence does not occur for the case of Hawking-Moss decay. This observation is consistent with requirements set by Poincare recurrence in de Sitter space.