AdS vacuum bubbles, holography and dual RG flows

Abstract

We explore the holographic properties of non-perturbative vacuum decay in anti-de Sitter () geometries. To this end, we consider a gravitational theory in a metastable state, which decays into an of lower vacuum energy via bubble nucleation, and we employ the Ryu–Takayanagi conjecture to compute the entanglement entropy in its alleged holographic dual. Our analysis connects the nucleation and growth of a vacuum bubble to a relevant deformation and a subsequent renormalization group (RG) flow in the boundary theory, with a c-function. We provide some evidence for the claim and comment on the holographic interpretation of off-centred or multiple bubbles. We also frame the issue in the formalism of Holographic Integral Geometry, highlighting some consequences on the structure of the holographic RG flow and recovering the standard holographic RG as a limiting case.