Vacuum tunneling in gravity

Abstract

Topologically non-trivial vacuum structures in gravity models with Cartan variables (vielbein and contortion) are considered. We study the possibility of vacuum spacetime tunneling in Einstein gravity assuming that the vielbein may play a fundamental role in quantum gravitational phenomena. It has been shown that in the case of RP(3) space topology, the tunneling between non-trivial topological vacuums can be realized by means of Eguchi-Hanson gravitational instanton. In the Riemann-Cartan geometric approach to quantum gravity, the vacuum tunneling can be provided by means of contortion quantum fluctuations. We define a double self-duality condition for the contortion and give explicit self-dual configurations which can contribute to vacuum tunneling amplitude.