Exactly Solvable Vacuum Decays with Gravity

Abstract

Using a new approach to the analysis of false vacuum decay based on the so-called tunneling potential, we develop a general method to find scalar potentials with a false vacuum with exactly solvable decay at the semi-classical level, including gravitational corrections. We examine in particular the decays of de Sitter vacua providing concrete examples that allow to explore analytically the transition between the Coleman-De Luccia and Hawking-Moss regimes.