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Phys. Rev. D 41, 418–430 (1990)

Universe decay and changing the cosmological constant

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Michael McGuigan*
The Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue, New York, New York 10021

Received 1 May 1989; published in the issue dated 15 January 1990

If superspace time is taken to be det(γ), where γij is the three-metric, then the cosmological constant plays the role of a (mass)2 term in the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. Second quantization allows particles of different mass to decay into one another if they are interacting. Likewise, adding interactions to the third-quantized Lagrangian allows universes with different cosmological constants to decay into one another. We consider a simple model with two types of universes, one of cosmological constant zero and the other nonzero. We compute the probability of decay and production for each type of universe.

© 1990 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.41.418
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevD.41.418
PACS:

*Present address: The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ 08540.