Is Vacuum Decay Significant in Ekpyrotic and Cyclic Models?

Abstract

It has recently been argued that bubble nucleation in ekpyrotic and cyclic cosmological scenarios can lead to unacceptable inhomogeneities unless certain constraints are satisfied. In this paper we show that this is not the case. We find that bubble nucleation is completely negligible in realistic models.

3 pages, 1 figure, minor revisions