New bounce solutions and vacuum tunneling in de Sitter spacetime

I describe a class of oscillating bounce solutions to the Euclidean field equations for gravity coupled to a scalar field theory with multiple vacua. I discuss their implications for vacuum tunneling transitions and for elucidating the thermal nature of de Sitter spacetime.Comment: 7 pages, 3 comment

Massless and Massive Monopoles Carrying Nonabelian Magnetic Charges

The properties of BPS monopoles carrying nonabelian magnetic charges are investigated by following the behavior of the moduli space of solutions as the Higgs field is varied from a value giving a purely abelian symmetry breaking to one that leaves a nonabelian subgroup of the gauge symmetry unbroken. As the limit of nonabelian unbroken symmetry is reached, some of the fundamental abelian monopoles remain massive but acquire nonabelian magnetic charges. The BPS mass formula indicates that others should because massless in this limit. These do not correspond to distinct solitons, but instead are manifested as a ``nonabelian cloud'' surrounding the massive monopoles, with their position and phase degrees of freedom being transformed into parameters characterizing the cloud.Comment: 17 pages Latex, presented at Quarks-96, Yaroslavl, Russi

Explicit Multimonopole Solutions in SU(N) Gauge Theory

We construct multimonopole solutions containing N-1 distinct fundamental monopoles in SU(N) gauge theory. When the gauge symmetry is spontaneously broken to U(1)^{N-1}, the monopoles are all massive, and we show that the fields can be written in terms of elementary function for all values of the monopole positions and phases. In the limit of unbroken U(1) X SU(N-2) X U(1) symmetry, the configuration can be viewed as containing a pair of massive monopoles, each carrying both U(1) and SU(N-2) magnetic charges, together with N-3 massless monopoles that condense into a cloud of non-Abelian fields. We obtain explicit expressions for the fields in the latter case and use these to analyze the properties of the non-Abelian cloud.Comment: 22 pages, no figure

Oscillating bounce solutions and vacuum tunneling in de Sitter spacetime

We study a class of oscillating bounce solutions to the Euclidean field equations for gravity coupled to a scalar field theory with two, possibly degenerate, vacua. In these solutions the scalar field crosses the top of the potential barrier $k>1$ times. Using analytic and numerical methods, we examine how the maximum allowed value of $k$ depends on the parameters of the theory. For a wide class of potentials $k_{\rm max}$ is determined by the value of the second derivative of the scalar field potential at the top of the barrier. However, in other cases, such as potentials with relatively flat barriers, the determining parameter appears instead to be the value of this second derivative averaged over the width of the barrier. As a byproduct, we gain additional insight into the conditions under which a Coleman-De Luccia bounce exists. We discuss the physical interpretation of these solutions and their implications for vacuum tunneling transitions in de Sitter spacetime.Comment: 31 pages, 11 figure