Vacuum stability in Geometric Trinity of Gravity

Abstract

The decay of a metastable (false) vacuum plays a crucial role in constraining Standard Model and beyond the Standard Model physics. In particular, it has been shown that gravity can have a significant impact on the calculation of the decay rate. In this context, it is natural to ask whether different but classically equivalent formulations of gravity lead to the same physical predictions. The aim of this paper is to analyze vacuum decay in teleparallel and symmetric teleparallel equivalent formulations of General Relativity (GR), namely TEGR and STEGR. Although these theories describe the same classical dynamics, it is of paramount importance to understand whether this equivalence persists also at the quantum level. In this respect, the analysis of vacuum stability may provide a particularly sensitive testing ground. The central question is whether the decay rate of a false vacuum computed within TEGR or STEGR coincides with the corresponding result obtained in GR. Our analysis shows that the tunneling exponent remains unchanged, offering a non-trivial example in which the equivalence between different formulations of gravity extends beyond classical dynamics.