Instanton solutions mediating tunneling between the degenerate vacua in curved space

Abstract

We investigate the instanton solution between the degenerate vacua in curved space. We show that there exist $O(4)$-symmetric solutions not only in de Sitter but also in both flat and anti--de Sitter space. The geometry of the new type of solutions is finite and preserves the ${Z}_{2}$ symmetry. The nontrivial solution corresponding to the tunneling is possible only if gravity is taken into account. The numerical solutions as well as the analytic computations using the thin-wall approximation are presented. We expect that these solutions do not have any negative mode as in the instanton solution.