The Decay of the de Sitter Vacuum

Cosmological vacuum energy does not remain constant for the same reason that a uniform electric field cannot persist indefinitely in the presence of quantum fluctuations. The decay rate of the Bunch-Davies state of QFT in de Sitter space due to particle creation is calculated in real time by the same method as that for an electric field, giving Schwinger’s result. In both the electric field and de Sitter cases the particles created are verified to be real, in that they persist in the final asymptotic region if the background field is switched off. The energy density of the particles decreases the vacuum energy and the Hubble expansion rate.