Cosmic Lockdown: When Decoherence Saves the Universe from Tunneling

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2512.14204v1
• Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2025 08:56:50 GMT
• Title: Cosmic Lockdown: When Decoherence Saves the Universe from Tunneling
• Authors: Robson Christie, Jaewoo Joo, Greg Kaplanek, Vincent Vennin, David Wands,
• Abstract summary: We investigate how quantum decoherence influences the dynamics of quantum fields in cosmological spacetimes.<n>We find that while decoherence is essential for suppressing quantum interference between vacua, its impact on the relative vacuum populations is limited.<n>This cosmic'' mechanism is a manifestation of the quantum Zeno effect: environmental monitoring stabilizes enhanced false-vacuum occupation for light fields by preventing them from tunneling.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: We investigate how quantum decoherence influences the tunneling dynamics of quantum fields in cosmological spacetimes. Specifically, we study a scalar field in an asymmetric double well potential during inflation, coupled to environmental degrees of freedom provided either by heavy spectator fields or by short-wavelength modes as they cross out the Hubble scale. This setup enables a systematic derivation of both Markovian and non-Markovian master equations, along with their stochastic unravelings, which we solve numerically. We find that, while decoherence is essential for suppressing quantum interference between vacua, its impact on the relative vacuum populations is limited. Fields heavier than the Hubble scale relax adiabatically toward the true vacuum with high probability, while lighter fields exhibit non-adiabatic enhancements of false-vacuum occupation. Once the system has decohered, quantum tunneling between vacua becomes strongly suppressed, effectively locking the system into the stochastically selected local minimum. This ``cosmic lockdown'' mechanism is a manifestation of the quantum Zeno effect: environmental monitoring stabilizes enhanced false-vacuum occupation for light fields by preventing them from tunneling.

Related papers

• Real-time collisions of fractional charges in a trapped-ion Jackiw-Rebbi field theory [39.146761527401424]
  We study the effect of back-reaction and quantum fluctuations on the coupled dynamics of the full fermion-boson system.<n>Our results reveal how back-reaction and quantum fluctuations modify the stability and real-time evolution of fractionalized fermions.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-12-08T17:34:53Z)
• Cavity Control of Topological Qubits: Fusion Rule, Anyon Braiding, and Majorana-Schrödinger Cat States [36.94429692322632]
  We investigate the effects of coupling a local electromagnetic cavity to a segment of a topological Kitaev chain (KC)<n>We provide evidence of non-trivial fusion rules and braiding operations, hallmark signatures of non-Abelian anyons, enabled by spatially selective ultrastrong KC-cavity coupling.<n>Our findings offer a novel approach to manipulating topological quantum matter through local light-matter interactions.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-09-06T18:00:00Z)
• Protecting Hilbert space fragmentation through quantum Zeno dynamics [0.0]
  We show the experimentally feasible viability of quantum Zeno dynamics in the protection of quantum information against thermalization. Our work demonstrates the experimentally feasible viability of quantum Zeno dynamics in the protection of quantum information against thermalization.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-05-10T18:00:02Z)
• Lensing of Vacuum Entanglement near Schwarzschild Black Holes [0.0]
  An important feature of Schwarzschild spacetime is the presence of orbiting null geodesics and caustics. Here, we raise the question whether the lensing manifests itself in the vacuum of quantum fields, namely by lensing the distribution of vacuum entanglement. We find that for the Boulware, Hartle-Hawking and Unruh vacua in 3+1 dimensional Schwarzschild spacetime, the harvesting of vacuum entanglement is indeed greatly amplified near caustics.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-03-02T16:44:16Z)
• Cloaking a qubit in a cavity [36.136619420474766]
  Cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) uses a cavity to engineer the mode structure of the vacuum electromagnetic field. Controllably decoupling a qubit from the cavity's photon population, effectively cloaking the qubit from the cavity. Experiment demonstrates how qubit cloaking can be exploited to cancel ac-Stark shift and measurement-induced dephasing.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2022-11-10T18:45:03Z)
• Probing the symmetry breaking of a light--matter system by an ancillary qubit [50.591267188664666]
  Hybrid quantum systems in the ultrastrong, and even more in the deep-strong, coupling regimes can exhibit exotic physical phenomena. We experimentally observe the parity symmetry breaking of an ancillary Xmon artificial atom induced by the field of a lumped-element superconducting resonator. This result opens a way to experimentally explore the novel quantum-vacuum effects emerging in the deep-strong coupling regime.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2022-09-13T06:14:08Z)
• Experimental Demonstration of Topological Charge Protection in Wigner Current [3.093409936654924]
  We reconstruct Wigner's current of quantum phase space dynamics for the first time. We reveal the push-and-pull" associated with damping and diffusion due to the coupling of a squeezed vacuum state to its environment.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-11-16T08:22:22Z)
• Spacetime effects on wavepackets of coherent light [24.587462517914865]
  We introduce an operational way to distinguish between the overall shift in the pulse wavepacket and its genuine deformation after propagation. We then apply our technique to quantum states of photons that are coherent in the frequency degree of freedom. We find that the quantum coherence initially present can enhance the deformation induced by propagation in a curved background.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-06-23T14:20:19Z)
• Schr\"odinger's cat for de Sitter spacetime [0.0]
  We provide a new phenomenological description for the response of quantum probes on a spacetime manifold in quantum superpositions. Applying this approach to static de Sitter space, we discover scenarios in which the effects produced by the quantum spacetime are operationally indistinguishable from those induced by superpositions of Rindler trajectories in Minkowski spacetime. The distinguishability of such quantum spacetimes from superpositions of trajectories in flat space reduces to the equivalence or non-equivalence of the field correlations between the superposed amplitudes.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-12-18T02:54:35Z)
• Harvesting correlations in Schwarzschild and collapsing shell spacetimes [0.0]
  We find that the Unruh vacuum agrees very well with the Vaidya vacuum near the horizon even for finite-time interactions. All four vacua have different capacities for creating correlations between the detectors, with the Vaidya vacuum interpolating between the Unruh vacuum near the horizon and the Boulware vacuum far from the horizon.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-07-06T18:00:03Z)
• Zitterbewegung and Klein-tunneling phenomena for transient quantum waves [77.34726150561087]
  We show that the Zitterbewegung effect manifests itself as a series of quantum beats of the particle density in the long-time limit. We also find a time-domain where the particle density of the point source is governed by the propagation of a main wavefront. The relative positions of these wavefronts are used to investigate the time-delay of quantum waves in the Klein-tunneling regime.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-03-09T21:27:02Z)
• Einselection from incompatible decoherence channels [62.997667081978825]
  We analyze an open quantum dynamics inspired by CQED experiments with two non-commuting Lindblad operators. We show that Fock states remain the most robust states to decoherence up to a critical coupling.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-01-29T14:15:19Z)

This list is automatically generated from the titles and abstracts of the papers in this site.

This site does not guarantee the quality of this site (including all information) and is not responsible for any consequences.