Work

Neutralizing topological obstructions to bubbles of nothing

Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: A bstract Theories with compact extra dimensions can exhibit a vacuum instability known as a bubble of nothing. These decay modes can be obstructed if the internal manifold is stabilized by fluxes, or if it carries Wilson lines for background gauge fields, or if the instanton is incompatible with the spin structure. In each of these cases the decay can proceed by adding dynamical charged membranes or gauge fields. We give a general, bottom-up procedure for constructing approximate bubble of nothing solutions in models with internal spheres stabilized by flux and study the influence of the brane tension on the tunneling exponent, finding two branches of solutions that merge at a minimal superextremal value of the tension. In the case of Wilson operators and incompatible fermions, the relevant bubble is shown to be the Euclidean Reissner-Nordstrom black hole, and the ordinary decay exponent is modified by 1/ g 2 effects. We examine the Dirac operator on this background and comment on the relevance for models of supergravity with gauged R -symmetry.
Language: English
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4387429263
FWCI: 0.308
Cites: 30
Cited by: 5
Related to: 10