Heretics of the False Vacuum: Gravitational Effects On and Of Vacuum Decay 2

Abstract

This paper reexamines the question of vacuum decay in theories of quantum gravity. In particular it suggests that decay into stable flat or AdS vacua, never occurs. Instead, vacuum decay occurs, if at all, into a cosmological spacetime. If the latter has negative cosmological constant, it undergoes a Big Crunch, which suggests that the whole picture is inconsistent. The question of decay of de Sitter space must be very carefully defined.