A ball sits in a pit. It won't roll out on its own: it needs a push. But in the quantum world, a particle can leak through a barrier without extra energy. This trick is called tunneling. A similar stunt could be pulled by the vacuum of the universe: if it isn't the most stable (physicists call it "false vacuum"), it might one day spontaneously transition to another state. The consequences would be catastrophic.
Gravity strongly influences such a transition. It can be described in different ways. Through curved spacetime, as in Einstein's theory. Through its "torsion"—that's teleparallel gravity, or TEGR. Or through "non-symmetric" geometry — symmetric teleparallel gravity, STEGR. In classical physics, all three versions give identical predictions. Like three translations of the same book. But does this equality hold in the quantum realm, where randomness reigns? The authors tested the idea on false vacuum decay.
This agreement is not just a mathematical exercise. At the quantum level, it hints that different "languages" of gravity describe the same underlying reality. And if we ever understand why the vacuum is stable (or not), it could help refine the Standard Model of particle physics and perhaps look beyond it.
as written by the authors arXiv:2606.28956
The decay of a metastable (false) vacuum plays a crucial role in constraining Standard Model and beyond the Standard Model physics. In particular, it has been shown that gravity can have a significant impact on the calculation of the decay rate. In this context, it is natural to ask whether different but classically equivalent formulations of gravity lead to the same physical predictions. The aim of this paper is to analyze vacuum decay in teleparallel and symmetric teleparallel equivalent formulations of General Relativity (GR), namely TEGR and STEGR. Although these theories describe the same classical dynamics, it is of paramount importance to understand whether this equivalence persists also at the quantum level. In this respect, the analysis of vacuum stability may provide a particularly sensitive testing ground. The central question is whether the decay rate of a false vacuum computed within TEGR or STEGR coincides with the corresponding result obtained in GR. Our analysis shows that the tunneling exponent remains unchanged, offering a non-trivial example in which the equivalence between different formulations of gravity extends beyond classical dynamics.
False vacuum is not just theory: if our universe were in such a state, its decay could start at any point and spread at the speed of light, rewriting the laws of physics along the way.
In the novel "The End of Eternity," Isaac Asimov describes a reality where changing the past can have catastrophic consequences — somewhat like the chain reaction of false vacuum decay.