Spontaeneous Symmetry Breaking and Tunneling in de Sitter Space

TL;DR

This paper investigates how quantum superpositions and tunneling effects in de Sitter space influence the cosmological constant, revealing that tunneling is governed by Hawking-Moss instantons and affects the universe's ground state.

Contribution

It introduces a calculation of tunneling probabilities in de Sitter space considering quantum superpositions, gravity coupling, and quantum corrections, highlighting the role of Hawking-Moss instantons.

Findings

Eigenstates are superpositions of well wavefunctions.

Energy levels are split due to tunneling.

Tunneling is determined by Hawking-Moss instantons.

Abstract

Motivated by our earlier argument that the apparent large cosmological constant from quantum fluctuations is actually an artifact of not using a full quantum mechanical superposition to determine the ground state in which the universe lives in the de Sitter space at the beginning of inflation, we calculate the tunneling probability for the two-well potential for a scalar field in de Sitter space. We include ocupling of the potential to gravity, and the effective potential from quantum corrections. The results show the eigenstates are the sum and differences of the wavefunctions for the seperate wells, i.e. a full superposition, and the energy levels are split, with tunneling between them determined by the Hawking-Moss instanton and not supressed.