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VERSION:2.0
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
PRODID:UW-Madison-Physics-Events
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SEQUENCE:3
UID:UW-Physics-Event-8151
DTSTART:20230308T190000Z
DTEND:20230308T203000Z
DTSTAMP:20260414T050604Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230223T135402Z
LOCATION:Chamberlin 5280
SUMMARY:Black holes and vacuum decay\, Theory Seminar (High Energy/Cos
 mology)\, Andrey Shkerin\, Univ. Minnesota
DESCRIPTION:: We will discuss the decay of a metastable vacuum catalys
 ed by black holes. The phenomenological interest in this problem lies 
 in the fact that our current electroweak vacuum may not be absolutely 
 stable. Its lifetime\, while sufficiently large in the present-day Uni
 verse\, may be significantly reduced in extreme environments such as t
 he vicinity of small hot primordial black holes\, which could be produ
 ced abundantly in the early Universe. From the theoretical point of vi
 ew\, the challenge is to compute the rate of decay of the false quantu
 m vacuum state which lives in a curved spacetime and which is generall
 y out of thermal equilibrium. I will discuss a general method of doing
  so and illustrate it using toy models of dilaton black holes in two d
 imensions. We will see that different vacuum states associated with a 
 black hole have parametrically different lifetimes. Hence\, in computi
 ng the enhancement of the electroweak vacuum decay rate near black hol
 es it is important to choose the physically relevant (Unruh) vacuum st
 ate. Finally\, I will outline what remains to be done in the realistic
  case of black holes in four dimensions.
URL:https://www.physics.wisc.edu/events/?id=8151
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