Tunneling in a Cosmological Model with Violation of Strong Energy Condition

TL;DR

This paper calculates the tunneling rate in a closed FRW universe with perfect fluid violating the strong energy condition, revealing that smaller violations increase tunneling probability.

Contribution

It provides an exact first-order calculation of tunneling rates using the dilute-instanton approximation in a cosmological model with energy condition violations.

Findings

Smaller violations of the strong energy condition lead to higher tunneling probabilities.

The tunneling rate is calculated with exact prefactors to first order in .

The approach applies the Duru-Kleinert path integral method to cosmology.

Abstract

The tunneling rate, with exact prefactor, is calculated to first order in \hbar for a closed FRW universe filled with perfect fluid violating the strong energy condition. The calculations are performed by applying the dilute-instanton approximation on the corresponding Duru-Kleinert path integral. It is shown that a closed FRW universe filled with a perfect fluid with small violation of strong energy condition is more probable to tunnel than the same universe with large violation of strong energy condition.