Thin-wall vacuum decay in the presence of a compact dimension meets the $H_0$ and $S_8$ tensions

Abstract

The proposal of a rapid sign-switching cosmological constant in the late universe, mirroring a transition from anti-de Sitter (AdS) to de Sitter (dS) space, has significantly improved the fit to observational data and provides a compelling framework for ameliorating major cosmological tensions, such as the $H_0$ and $S_8$ tensions. An attractive theoretical realisation that accommodates the AdS $\to$ dS transition relies on the Casimir forces of fields inhabiting the bulk of a 5-dimensional (5-dim) set up. Among the fields characterising the dark sector, there is a real scalar field $\phi$ endowed with a potential holding two local minima with very small difference in vacuum energy and bigger curvature (mass) of the lower one. Shortly after the false vacuum tunnels to its true vacuum state, $\phi$ becomes more massive and its contribution to the Casimir energy becomes exponentially suppressed. The tunneling process then changes the difference between the total number of fermionic and bosonic degrees of freedom contributing to the quantum corrections of the vacuum energy, yielding the AdS $\to$ dS transition. We investigate the properties of this theoretical realisation to validate its main hypothesis and characterise free parameters of the model. We adopt the Coleman-de Luccia formalism for calculating the transition probability within the thin-wall approximation. We show that the Euclidean bounce configuration that drives the transition between $\phi$ vacua has associated at least a sixth order potential. We also show that distinctive features of the required vacuum decay to accommodate the AdS $\to$ dS transition are inconsistent with a 5-dim non-compact description of the instanton, for which the bounce is $O(5)$ symmetric, and instead call for a 5-dim instanton with a compact dimension, for which the bounce is $O(4)\times U(1)$ symmetric.