Nonsingular Decaying Vacuum Cosmology and Entropy Production

TL;DR

This paper explores the thermodynamic evolution of a decaying vacuum cosmology, detailing temperature and entropy changes from early to late de Sitter eras, aligning with quantum field theory estimates.

Contribution

It provides an analytical study of entropy production and temperature evolution in a nonsingular decaying vacuum universe across its entire history.

Findings

Entropy increases from zero to about 10^{88} within the current Hubble radius.

The temperature evolution law is explicitly derived.

The ratio of initial to late vacuum energy densities is approximately 10^{123}.

Abstract

The thermodynamic behavior of a decaying vacuum cosmology describing the entire cosmological history evolving between two extreme (early and late time) de Sitter eras is investigated. The thermal evolution from the early de Sitter to the radiation phase is discussed in detail. The temperature evolution law and the increasing entropy function are analytically determined. The entropy of the effectively massless particles is initially zero but evolves continuously to the present day maximum value within the current Hubble radius, $S_0 \sim 10^{88}$ in natural units. By using the Gibbons-Hawking temperature relation for the de Sitter spacetime, it is found that the ratio between the primeval and the late time vacuum energy densities is $\rho_{vI}/\rho_{v0} \sim 10^{123}$, as required by some naive estimates from quantum field theory.