Relativistic bubble dynamics: From cosmic inflation to hadronic bags

Abstract

In this paper we develop the complete theory of the relativistic motion of a singular layer of matter under the influence of surface tension and volume tension. In order to account for vacuum tension effects we suggest a formalism of universal applicability: the single degree of freedom of a relativistic "bubble" is coupled in a gauge-invariant manner to a potential three-form A in the presence o f gravity. The mathematical and physical consequences of this coupling can be summarized as follows. (i) The action functional of the theory, when written in geometric form, is formally quite similar to the Einstein-Maxwell action for the dynamics of a point charge on a Riemannian manifold. However, in comparison with electrodynamics, bubble dynamics is a highly constrained theory with a vastly different physical content: the gauge field F = d A propagates no degrees of freedom and when it is coupled to gravity alone, it gives rise to a cosmological constant of arbitrary magnitude. (ii) We exploit this peculiar property of the gauge field to solve exactly some of the equations of motion of bubble dynamics. The net physical result is the nucleation of bubbles in different "vacuum phases" of the de Sitter type characterized by two effective and distinct cosmological constants, one inside and one outside the domain wall. (iii) Because of the generality of the above mechanism, the theory is applicable to a variety of different physical situations; in the case of a spherical bubble we derive the radial equation of motion and solve it explicitly in a number of cases of physical interest ranging from cosmology to particle physics. Thus, in curved spacetime we find that our action functional provides a natural basis for the so-called inflationary cosmology; in flat spacetime we find that our action functional generates the same vacuum tension advocated in the so-called "bag model" of strong interactions in order to confine quarks and gluons.

Noncommutative Black Holes, the Final Appeal to Quantum Gravity: A Review

“…This represents the first chapter in a program for studying the physics of extended quantum objects, which also include 2-dimensional branes and 3-dimensional bubbles (for more details see Refs. [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34].…”

Bag formation from gauge condensate

“…As we will see, the answer to this question is positive, such an effect can be produced if the minimal coupling of the 3-index gauge potential A ναβ to 2 + 1 membranes is considered [16], that is, we add to the action (6) a term of the form…”

Shell-mediated tunnelling between (anti-)de Sitter vacua

“…At the same time, and as opposed with the true vacuum bubbles of Coleman et al, false vacuum bubbles were also considered. In connection with gravity, the behavior of regions of false vacuum, first studied by Sato et al [7,8,9,10,11,12], was for example analyzed in [13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20]. For additional papers analyzing it in the context of inflation, we refer the reader to [21,22,23]; interesting links with more phenomenologically oriented approaches can also be drawn, as witnessed, for instance, by the recent [24].…”