There such thing as the 'lowest' vacuum?

[Anonymous No.11338618]

I'd like some professional help with this, please keep speculations out of this discussion.

Given our current data, expansion is likely to indefinitely continue resulting in a universe where no work is possible. Now let us assume that the universe we live in is a one-shot universe i.e. it came from something, but now it's headed for its ultimate decay for eternity. In this universe, the only true possible end would be not heat death (because quantum foam still holds a non-zero probability for creating big-bangs), but a decay of the vacuum state to a yet lower energy state. During this fall, all microscopic quantum fluctuations would be macroscopically relevant and create potentially new universes with different fundamental constants.

The question is how long can this process go on for? Let's say after some N number of drops, the vacuum state does decay into a true vaccum. What then? Quantum laws vanish too? Is that a logical conclusion to make? Why should we say that quantum foam wouldn't exist in a truly zero energy state? Mathematically there is no reason why HUP should cease to exist, therefore there is no true vacuum and there is always a lower energy state to drop into. We either have to invalidate the concept of infinity or give up a very fundamental mathematical truth. What are the hopes for one-shot universe? I can't find a good one.

[Anonymous No.11338831]

>>11338618
you should read the paper by coleman and de luccia. the conclusion in the modern perspective is that assuming inflation is true (observationally it has lots of confirmation) then our current vacuum decayed from an earlier vacuum where the vacuum energy was such that we had a de Sitter metric where the universe rapidly expanded. the current vacuum nucleated like a bubble out of that and the vacuum energy is very small so things are roughly flat. then coleman and de luccia showed that another step down from a flat scenario would be a finite anti-de Sitter universe which inevitably collapses to a gravitational singularity. so no matter how small you go below a flat metric, then there is inevitable gravitational collapse.

of course one might argue that our vacuum is slightly positive energy and could jump to a smaller slightly positive vacuum but you could only asymptotically approach flat if you want to avoid collapse

[Anonymous No.11340176]

>>11338831
>could jump to a smaller slightly positive vacuum
How would that appear to us, were it to happen?

[Anonymous No.11340207]

>>11340176
the bubble would expand at a rate approaching the speed of light, so we wouldn’t see it coming before it engulfs us. whether or not we survive afterword is hard to say because the dilatation field cannot be the standard model higgs based on what we know about the electroweak scale, so if it is just a dilatation field decay of something that only effects the cosmological constant then what we would see is some amount of “reheating” (the idea is that the false vacuum state is “supercooled” so when it decays it releases its heat into the other fields) meaning that we see particles and radiation coming out of nothing so we might burn to death or just see the night sky “glowing” depending on how much reheating. however in most unified models the dilatation field probably is tied up with the way our standard model particles work so in that case all matter disintegrates too, so in addition to reheating there may be recombination too where all the newly disintegrated matter forms new kinds of atoms or just turns into all radiation / massless fermions and flies off at the speed of light without any new atoms ever forming

[Anonymous No.11340384]

>>11340176
All particles become different particles.

[Anonymous No.11340398]

>>11340207
what is dilatation

[Anonymous No.11340532]

>>11340398
i guess "dilatation field" is an obscure terminology. others might call it an "inflaton field". it is simply the field OP is talking about being in a false vacuum. one thing to keep in mind is that for a field to have nontrivial false vacua, it must be a scalar field (similar to a higgs), otherwise it violates lorentz invariance

[Anonymous No.11340551]

PS here is the classic Coleman + De Luccia paper

https://www.sns.ias.edu/pitp2/2011files/PhysRevD.21.3305.pdf

the paper preceded the classic Guth paper on inflation and also the observation that the universe's expansion is accelerating, so you have to remember to put it into a more modern context (the way it is written seems to focus more on the idea that we are in a flat universe that might have vacuum decay, rather than the inflationary idea that we are in a decayed form of a prior de Sitter space [a la inflation from Guth in 1981])