Life-time of Metastable Vacuum in String Theory and Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture

Abstract

It has been known that the catalytic effect makes the life-time of a metastable state shorter. We discuss this phenomenon in a decay process of a metastable vacuum in the brane-limit of type IIB string theory. Due to the non-linear effect of DBI action, the bubble created by the decay makes an energetically favorable bound state with an impurity that plays the role of catalyst, which is quite specific to this model and different from other catalysts such as a back hole. Furthermore, we found that this low-energy effective theory around almost unstable regions reduces to a simple quantum mechanical system, and the vacuum life-time can be calculated using known results, even beyond the WKB approximation. Finally, we compare the life-time of the vacuum with the Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC) and find that as long as the string scale is at least one order magnitude smaller than the Planck scale, there is a nonzero window to satisfy the TCC condition.