Instability of de Sitter Space, the Schwinger Effect & Dynamical Dark Energy

by Emil Mottola (Los Alamos)

Monday 2 Dec 2013, 15:00 → 16:00 Europe/Zurich

4/2-011 - TH common room (CERN)

Global de Sitter space is unstable to particle creation. The O(4, 1) de Sitter invariant state is a de finite phase coherent superposition of particle and anti-particle solutions in both the asymptotic past and future, and therefore is not a true vacuum state. In the closely analogous case of a constant, uniform electric field, a time symmetric state analogous to the de Sitter invariant one is constructed, which is also not a stable vacuum state, because of the Schwinger effect. The role of a quantum anomaly in the growth of perturbations and symmetry breaking is emphasized in both cases. Consequences of this result for cosmology and the problem of vacuum dark energy will be discussed.