No Negative Modes About the Axionic Wormhole Instanton
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The axion is a hypothetical elementary particle originally proposed as a solution to the strong CP problem. Because the axion is associated with a pseudo-scalar field instead of a scalar field, it has a nontrivial instanton solution, which has the form of a spherically symmetric wormhole. We examine the perturbations about this instanton using a scalar-vector-tensor decomposition. The vector modes are pure gauge, and therefore may be directly integrated. We compute the action for the tensor modes and the spectrum is shown to be non-negative. We obtain the action of the scalar modes using a transformation from the known action of a scalar field coupled to gravity. The scalar mode spectrum is also shown to be non-negative, so the axionic wormhole instanton has no negative modes. This discourages the interpretation of this instanton as a decay rate, and instead supports the Coleman interpretation of this instanton as showing that the ground state is a superposition of many-universe states.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | June 5, 2015 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Kinsella, Alex |
|---|---|
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Department of Physics |
| Primary advisor | Hartnoll, Sean |
| Advisor | Kachru, Shamit |
Subjects
| Subject | axion |
|---|---|
| Subject | instanton |
| Subject | wormhole |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Kinsella, Alex (2015). No Negative Modes About the Axionic Wormhole Instanton. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: http://purl.stanford.edu/qm163bh7902
Collection
Undergraduate Theses, Department of Physics
View other items in this collection in SearchWorksContact information
- Contact
- alexk15@stanford.edu
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...