Gravitationally compact objects as nucleation sites for first-order vacuum phase transitions

Details Gravitationally compact objects as nucleation sites for first-order vacuum phase transitions Gravitationally compact objects as nucleation sites for first-order vacuum phase transitions

Jun 1992

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1992phrvd..45.4411s&link_type=abstract

Physical Review D (Particles, Fields, Gravitation, and Cosmology), Volume 45, Issue 12, 15 June 1992, pp.4411-4420

Physics

1

Particle-Theory And Field-Theory Models Of The Early Universe, Theory Of Quantized Fields

Scientific paper

A characteristic of first-order phase transitions is their ability to be initiated by nucleation sites. In this paper we consider the role that gravitationally compact objects may play as nucleation sites for first-order phase transitions within quantum fields. As the presence of nucleation sites may prevent the onset of supercooling, the existence of nucleation sites for phase transitions within quantum fields may play an important role in some inflationary models of the Universe, in which the Universe is required to exist in a supercooled state for a period of time. In this paper we calculate the Euclidean action for an O(3) bubble nucleating about a gravitationally compact object, taken to be a boson star for simplicity. The gravitational field of the boson star is taken to be a small perturbation on flat space, and the O(3) action is calculated to linear order as a perturbation on the O(4) action. The Euclidean bubble profile is found by solving the (Higgs) scalar field equation numerically; the thin-wall approximation is not used. The gravitationally compact objects are found to have the effect of reducing the Euclidean action of the nucleating bubble, as compared to the Euclidean action for the bubble in flat spacetime. The effect is strongest when the size of the gravitationally compact object is comparable to the size of the nucleating bubble. Further, the size of the decrease in action increases as the nucleating ``star'' is made more gravitationally compact. Thus, gravitationally compact objects may play the role of nucleation sites. However, their importance to the process of false-vacuum decay is strongly dependent upon their number density within the Universe.

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