Instability of the Kaluza-Klein Vacuum

Ignacio Ruiz García will present the following paper: Instability of the Kaluza-Klein Vacuum, por Edward Witten (Nucl. Phys. B195 (1982) 481-492).

It is argued that the ground state of the Kaluza-Klein unified theory is unstable against a process of semiclassical barrier penetration. This is related to the fact that the positive energy conjecture does not hold for the Kaluza-Klein theory; an explicit counter-example is given. The reasoning presented here assumes that in general relativity one should include manifolds of non-vacuum topology. It is argued that the existence of elementary fermions (not present in the original Kaluza-Klein theory) would stabilize the Kaluza-Klein vacuum.

BoN-Witten.pdf