Proceedings preprint:

---

Keywords:

general relativity, quantum gravity, quantum mechanics, de Sitter spacetime, anti de-Sitter spacetime, Israel junction conditions, relativistic shells, WKB (semiclassical) approximation, N-dimensional generalization.

Project goals:

to generalize to the N-dimensional case some results about vacuum decay that where obtained by Coleman and de Luccia in 4-dimensions (and reproduced using general relativistic shells).

Project results:

in this proceedings we summarize the problem and show that the generalization is possible; the full computation can be found elsewhere.

Short Description.

The system under consideration is constituted by a relativistic shell (described using Israel's junction conditions) which separates two regions with the de Sitter and/or anti de Sitter geometries. With at hand the effective momentum of the system, in the WKB approximation it is possible to compute the transition coefficient associated with the process of nucleation of a de Sitter/anti-de Sitter bubble inside a de Sitter/anti-de Sitter spacetime with different cosmological constant. The bubble then expands and fill the whole "universe" , realizing the transitio between what we call "two different vacua".

Additional material: