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| Coleman–De Luccia | |
|---|---|
| Name | Coleman–De Luccia |
| Field | Theoretical physics |
| Known for | Vacuum decay, instantons |
Coleman–De Luccia
Coleman–De Luccia plays a central role in studies of false vacuum decay, semiclassical tunneling, and gravitational instantons in high-energy physics, connecting work by Sidney Coleman, Curtis Callan, Frank De Luccia and later developments influenced by Stephen Hawking, Alexander Vilenkin, Alan Guth, Andrei Linde and Paul Steinhardt. The formulation synthesizes ideas from Quantum Field Theory, General Relativity, Euclidean Quantum Gravity and Thermodynamics, and has been applied in contexts ranging from inflation to the String Theory landscape and the Anthropic principle discussions driven by Leonard Susskind and Raphael Bousso. The work is frequently invoked alongside results from the Hawking–Moss instanton, the bounce formalism of Sidney Coleman and Curtis Callan, and semiclassical analyses used by researchers at institutions such as Princeton University, Harvard University, Cambridge University, and Institute for Advanced Study.
The motivation emerged from efforts to reconcile Coleman and Curtis Callan's flat-space tunneling analysis with gravitational effects studied by Stephen Hawking and Gary Gibbons, and to understand vacuum transitions in models discussed by Andrei Linde and Alan Guth during the development of inflationary cosmology. Studies by Gerard 't Hooft, Martin Rees, John Preskill, and Edward Witten on quantum effects in curved backgrounds, together with the landscape ideas of Michael Douglas and Joe Polchinski, underscored the need for a gravitational generalization of the bounce. The conceptual lineage also traces through the Euclidean methods of Richard Feynman, semiclassical approximations used by Julian Schwinger, and path integral techniques refined in the work of Kenneth Wilson.
The instanton solution described by Coleman–De Luccia employs the Euclidean continuation used by Stephen Hawking and constructs an O(4)-symmetric bounce that interpolates between a false vacuum and a true vacuum in the presence of Einstein field equations. The construction uses scalar potentials studied in models by Andrei Linde, Paul Steinhardt, Albrecht and Steinhardt, Alexander Vilenkin and others, imposing regularity conditions analogous to those in analyses by George Ellis and Roger Penrose. Calculations require matching techniques similar to those in John Wheeler's minisuperspace reductions and employ boundary conditions related to the no-boundary proposals associated with James Hartle and Stephen Hawking. The result is a Euclidean solution whose analytic continuation yields a Lorentzian bubble geometry relevant for observers discussed in works by Alan Guth and Andrei Linde.
The thin-wall approximation simplifies the instanton by assuming a small energy difference between vacua, an approach parallel to approximations used in studies by Michael Turner and David Spergel of early-universe phase transitions. In this limit the wall tension and curvature interplay resembles calculations in Israel junction analyses used in models by Werner Israel, and the resulting bubble nucleation rates connect to nucleation studies by John Langer and S. Coleman's flat-space results. The thin-wall formulas have been adapted for investigations by Raphael Bousso and Joseph Polchinski into multivacuum landscapes and inform cosmological scenarios proposed by Alexei Starobinsky and Andrei Linde.
Coleman–De Luccia methods underpin analyses of false vacuum decay relevant to models by Alan Guth, Andrei Linde, Vilenkin, and Paul Steinhardt; they inform debates over eternal inflation articulated by Alan Guth and Alexander Vilenkin and the measure problem discussed by Garriga and Aguirre. These instantons are used in string-theoretic landscape studies by Leonard Susskind, Michael Douglas, and Joseph Polchinski to estimate transition rates among flux vacua considered by Cumrun Vafa and Shamit Kachru. Cosmological constant problems examined by Steven Weinberg and anthropic reasoning popularized by Brandon Carter draw on transition probabilities computed in this framework, and observational implications have been considered by Max Tegmark and Martin Rees in multiverse contexts.
Generalizations include non‑O(4)-symmetric instantons studied by Gary Gibbons and Sean Carroll, finite-temperature variants connected to the Hawking–Moss instanton analyzed by Ian Moss, and inclusion of gauge fields as in treatments by Edward Witten and Alexander Polyakov. Higher-dimensional generalizations appear in the work of Joseph Polchinski and Cumrun Vafa within String Theory compactifications, while semiclassical corrections and loop effects connect to renormalization studies by Ken Wilson and Gerard 't Hooft. Recent proposals incorporate holographic perspectives inspired by Juan Maldacena and Edward Witten's AdS/CFT correspondence, and landscape transition networks build on computational approaches explored by Michael Douglas and Ben Freivogel.
Analytical methods draw on techniques introduced by Sidney Coleman, Curtis Callan, and Stephen Hawking using Euclidean path integrals, while numerical shooting methods and spectral techniques echo practices in computational work at Los Alamos National Laboratory and CERN. Numerical implementations frequently adapt solvers developed in studies by John Preskill and Katherine Freese, and make use of stability analyses akin to those by Evgeny Lifshitz and Lev Landau. Modern investigations employ high-performance computing platforms used at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory to solve the coupled nonlinear ordinary differential equations that define the instanton, and incorporate linear perturbation theory influenced by Viktor F. Weisskopf and Steven Weinberg.
Category:Quantum field theory Category:Cosmology Category:General relativity