Bubbles Unbound: Bubbles of Nothing Without Kaluza-Klein

TL;DR

This paper introduces analytic initial data for five-dimensional bubbles of nothing that are asymptotically flat without Kaluza-Klein structure, revealing potential instabilities and diverse bubble configurations in higher-dimensional gravity.

Contribution

It provides the first analytic time symmetric initial data for bubbles of nothing in five dimensions without Kaluza-Klein asymptotics, allowing arbitrary size and mass.

Findings

Bubbles can be arbitrarily light and large.

Bubbles can expand outward, indicating potential instabilities.

High curvature regions can be confined to small volumes.

Abstract

I present analytic time symmetric initial data for five dimensions describing ``bubbles of nothing'' which are asymptotically flat in the higher dimensional sense, i.e. there is no Kaluza-Klein circle asymptotically. The mass and size of these bubbles may be chosen arbitrarily and in particular the solutions contain bubbles of any size which are arbitrarily light. This suggests the solutions may be important phenomenologically and in particular I show that at low energy there are bubbles which expand outwards, suggesting a new possible instability in higher dimensions. Further, one may find bubbles of any size where the only region of high curvature is confined to an arbitrarily small volume.