Dissipative Losses In Black Hole-Induced Vacuum Decay

TL;DR

This paper investigates how radiative losses influence black hole-induced false vacuum decay, revealing that such decay remains exponentially suppressed despite potential enhancements, thus addressing a key puzzle in cosmology.

Contribution

It demonstrates that radiative losses significantly slow down vacuum decay bubbles near black holes, preventing runaway decay and refining understanding of black hole catalysis effects.

Findings

Radiative losses decelerate vacuum bubbles near black holes.

Vacuum decay remains exponentially suppressed despite potential enhancements.

Radiative effects are crucial in black hole-induced vacuum decay scenarios.

Abstract

We address the long-standing puzzle of false vacuum decay catalyzed by black holes. Naively, small black holes with large Hawking temperatures can generate highly-boosted true vacuum bubbles in the early universe and trigger vacuum decay without any exponential suppression. Working in the thin-wall regime of the $\phi^4$ and sine-Gordon models, we show that radiative losses play a crucial role in decelerating these bubbles and preventing runaway vacuum decay. We find that while the production rate is enhanced compared with vacuum tunneling in some parts of the parameter space, it is always exponentially suppressed.