Dissipative Losses In Black Hole-Induced Vacuum Decay

Abstract

We address the long-standing puzzle of false vacuum decay catalyzed by black holes. Naively, small black holes with large Hawking temperatures can generate highly-boosted true vacuum bubbles in the early universe and trigger vacuum decay without any exponential suppression. Working in the thin-wall regime of the $\phi^4$ and sine-Gordon models, we show that radiative losses play a crucial role in decelerating these bubbles and preventing runaway vacuum decay. We find that while the production rate is enhanced compared with vacuum tunneling in some parts of the parameter space, it is always exponentially suppressed.