Sequestering effects on and of vacuum decay

TL;DR

This paper investigates how vacuum energy sequestering suppresses the effects of phase transitions on the cosmological constant, ensuring its stability despite cosmic history changes.

Contribution

It demonstrates constraints on model couplings for stability and shows vacuum energy contributions are suppressed by spacetime volume ratios in sequestering models.

Findings

Vacuum energy contributions are strongly suppressed in descendant vacua.

The absence of instabilities constrains couplings in sequestering models.

Cosmological constant remains insensitive to phase transitions.

Abstract

We consider phase transitions and their contributions to vacuum energy in the manifestly local theory of vacuum energy sequestering. We demonstrate that the absence of instabilities imposes constraints on the couplings of gravitating and non-gravitating sectors, which can be satisfied in a large class of models. We further show by explicit construction that the vacuum energy contributions to the effective cosmological constant in the descendant vacua are generically strongly suppressed by the ratios of spacetime volumes of parent and descendant geometries. This means that the cosmological constant in de Sitter descendant vacua remains insensitive to phase transitions which may have occurred in the course of its cosmic history.