Gravity and Rapid Tunnelling

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:11080145,
            doi = {10.48660/11080145},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/11080145},
            author = {Copsey, Keith},
            keywords = {Cosmology},
            language = {en},
            title = {Gravity and Rapid Tunnelling},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2011},
            month = {aug},
            note = {PIRSA:11080145 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }
          

Abstract

I'll discuss my recent results (1108.2255) showing that, once gravity and some technical confusions are taken care of, two classes of potentials one expects to be generic in a landscape, namely ones resulting in thin-wall instantons or with small relative differences in potentials, result in instantons which typically decay rapidly, including exponentially enhanced rates for thin-wall instantons. I'll explain why this is true both generally and in detail and why the previous treatments have gone astray. This meeting will be designed to be a highly informal and interactive session to present these results in detail and address questions, confusions, and challenges of those, esp. cosmologists, with some level of background in tunnelling. I'll give a broader presentation of this material for a more general audience in the strings group meeting (Friday 11am, space room).