Instability of de Sitter space under thermal radiation in different vacua

Abstract

We study the instability of de Sitter space-time (dS) under thermal radiation in different vacua. We argue that the mode function solution of a scalar field in four-dimensional dS can be separated into the incoming and outgoing modes. Different vacua for dS are realized by different combinations of positive frequency modes assigned to each solution. For a minimally coupled massless scalar field, we explicitly compute the behavior of the mode function and the corresponding energy-momentum tensor in the Unruh vacuum near the horizon, and find that the horizon area increases (decreases) in time when the incoming (outgoing) mode contributes to thermal flux.

Comments: (v1) 31 pages, 5 figures; (v2) 32 pages, misleading discussions in Section 2.2 corrected and expanded; (v3) 33 pages, discussions refined, to appear in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics