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SUMMARY:"Gravitational instabilities of spacetime" by Isabel Garcia Garcia
  (UC Santa Barbara)
DTSTART:20211209T170000
DTEND:20211209T180000
DTSTAMP:20260506T053543Z
UID:f75639d0a6debc67133c2d9561a01d4be7479b6cdfe2a330fd1b011d
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Isabel Garcia Garcia (UC Santa Barbara)\n\n\nGravitational ins
 tabilities of spacetime\n\nTheories with compact extra dimensions can be u
 nstable to decay into a bubble of nothing -- an instability that results
  in the destruction of spacetime. In this talk\, I will discuss whether bu
 bbles of nothing can exist in realistic theories where the moduli field r
 esponsible for setting the size of the extra dimensions is stabilized at a
  positive value of the vacuum energy. Using bottom-up methods\, and focus
 ing on a five-dimensional toy model\, I will argue that four-dimensional d
 e Sitter vacua admit bubbles of nothing for a wide class of stabilizing po
 tentials. I will show that\, unlike ordinary Coleman-De Luccia tunneling\,
  the corresponding decay rate remains non-zero in the limit of vanishing v
 acuum energy\, and that it can be faster than decay channels previously di
 scussed in the literature. I will discuss potential implications on the ph
 ysics of vacuum selection\, as well as on the possibility of nucleating 
 a Universe from "nothing".\n\n
LOCATION:https://epfl.zoom.us/j/68370428377?pwd=Sm41QTNEbWd3L1FyZ3RYU2pONW
 1zZz09
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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