Impacts of wormholes on false vacuum bubble tunneling
Phys. Rev. D 112, 026033 – Published 31 July, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/7lvl-8vqb
Abstract
In this study, we generalize the work of Farhi, Guth, and Guven [Nucl. Phys. B339, 417 (1990)] by incorporating a wormhole and investigating the impact of the topological structure of spacetime on false vacuum bubble tunneling. In our model, the spherically symmetric bubble contains two domain walls. The classical dynamics of each domain wall are constrained by two classically forbidden regions. We find that the presence of a wormhole increases the number of instantons, thereby enhancing the tunneling rate. We analytically derive the tunneling rate formula, which reduces to the result obtained by Farhi, Guth, and Guven in the limit where the wormhole vanishes. Our results show that the tunneling rate increases with both the wormhole throat radius and the black hole mass. We demonstrate that the topological structure of spacetime influences domain wall tunneling. Within a limited range of parameters, we find that the tunneling rate increases with surface tension, while it decreases with the cosmological constant. In the case where a wormhole exists within a bubble and is connected to another universe, we demonstrate that the bubble can enter into another universe through quantum tunneling.
