1. Introduction
We consider the local thermodynamics of the de Sitter stage of the expansion of the Universe. The term “local” means that we consider the de Sitter vacuum as the thermal state, which is characterized by the local temperature. This consideration is based on observation, that matter immersed in the de Sitter vacuum feels this vacuum as the heat bath with the local temperature , where H is the Hubble parameter. This temperature has no relation to the cosmological horizon, and to the Hawking radiation from the cosmological horizon. However, it is exactly twice the Gibbons-Hawking temperature, . The reason for such relation is thel symmetry of the de Sitter space-time with respect to the combined translations. In the Minkowski vacuum, this symmetry becomes the conventional invariance of under translations.
The existence of the local temperature suggests the existence of the other local thermodynamic variables, which participate in the local thermodynamics of the de Sitter state. In addition to the the local entropy density s and local vacuum energy density , there are also the local thermodynamic variables related to the gravitational degrees of freedom.
Although the local temperature is twice larger than the Gibbons-Hawking temperature assigned to the cosmological horizon, there is the certain connection between the local entropy s and the global entropy usually assigned to the event horizon. It appears that the total entropy of the de Sitter state in the volume bounded by the cosmological horizon coincides with the Gibbons-Hawking entropy, which is proportional to the area A of the horizon, . Such holographic bulk-surface correspondence takes place only in the spacetime. Although the peculiarity of the spacetime may be related to the special symmetry, which connects the local thermodynamic variables, the origin of the holography is still not very clear. That is why we extended the consideration of the local thermodynamics to the gravity, and checked the bulk-surface correspondence in this modified version of general relativity.
The
gravity in terms of the Ricci scalar
is one of the simplest geometrical models, which describes the dark energy and de Sitter expansion of the Universe.[
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7] It was used to construct an inflationary model of the early Universe – the Starobinsky inflation, which is controlled by the
contribution to the effective action. This class of models,
, was also reproduced in the so-called
q-theory,[
8,
9] where
q is the 4-form field introduced by Hawking[
10] for the phenomenological description of the physics of the deep (ultraviolet) vacuum (here the sign convention for
is opposite to that in Ref. [
2]). The Starobinsky model is in good agreement with the observations. However, despite the observational success, the theory of Starobinsky inflation is still phenomenological. Due to a rather small mass scale
M compared with the Planck scale it is difficult to embed the model into a UV complete theory.[
11,
12,
13] But we used this model only for the generalization of the de Sitter thermodynamics and for consideration of the validity of the holographic principle.
The
theory demonstrates that the effective gravitational coupling
K (it is the inverse Newton constant,
) and the scalar curvature
are connected by equation
. This suggests that
K and
are the thermodynamically conjugate variables.[
14,
15] This pair of the non-extensive gravitational variables is similar to the pair of the electrodynamic variables, electric field
and electric induction
, which participate in the thermodynamics of dielectrics. They are also similar to the pair of magnetic thermodynamic variables, magnetic induction
and magnetic field
.
In the de Sitter spacetime, the local temperature does no depend on the theories of general relativity and thus has the same value . Using the local thermodynamics with this temperature, we obtained the general result for the total entropy of the Hubble volume, , where is the effective gravitational coupling and . This supports the holographic bulk-surface correspondence in the spacetime.
Note that the spacetime has special symmetry, which is absent in the other dimensions. The thermodynamically conjugate variables have the same dimensionality of the square of inverse length: , and . It looks that this symmetry is important for the validity of the holographic correspondence.
Since the de Sitter state has thermal behaviour, it serves as the thermal bath for matter. The matter violates the de Sitter symmetry. As a result the energy exchange between vacuum and matter leads to the decay of the de Sitter state.
The plan of the paper is the following.
In
Section 2 we show that the de Sitter vacuum serves as the thermal bath for the external matter – the matter immersed into the de Sitter environment. This is different from the traditional consideration of the vacua of the quantum fields in the de Sitter spacetime, which uses the Euclidean action method. Example of the influence of the de Sitter vacuum to the external matter is provided by an atom in the de Sitter environment (
Section 2.1). As distinct from the atom in the flat space, the atom in the de Sitter vacuum has a certain probability of ionization. The rate of ionization is similar to the rate of ionization in the presence of the thermal bath with temperature
.[
16,
17,
18,
19,
20] In
Section 2.2 it is shown that the same temperature determines the other activation processes, which are energetically forbidden in the Minkowski spacetime, but are allowed in the de Sitter background. Examples are the splitting of the heavy particle with mass
m to two particles with masses
,
21,
22] and radiation of electron-positron pairs by the electron at rest. In
Section 2.4 it is shown that the local temperature
T also determines the Gibbons-Hawking temperature of radiation from the cosmological horizon
without using the Euclidean action.
Section 3 is devoted to the local thermodynamics of the de Sitter state, which is determined by the local temperature
. The local temperature leads to the local entropy of the de Sitter thermal bath (
Section 3.2), which integrated over the Hubble volume reproduces the Gibbons-Hawking entropy of the cosmological horizon (Sec.
Section 3.4).
Section 4 describes the attempt to obtain the de Sitter thermal states from the general principles of thermodynamics of the many-body systems. We consider the multi-metric gravity, which can be viewed as an ensemble of the sub-Universes, each described by its own metric
(or tetrads
), by its own gravitational coupling
and cosmological constant
. The heat exchange between the sub-Universes leads to their thermalization – the formation of the Universe in which the sub-Universes have the common Hubble parameter and thus they have the common temperature.
Section 5 is devoted to thermodynamics of de Sitter in the
gravity. It contains the pair of the thermodynamically conjugate variables,
K and
(
Section 5.1). These variables together with the local temperature and local entropy provide the generalization of Gibbs-Duhem relation for the de Sitter state (
Section 5.2). The confirmation of the holographic result for the total entropy of the Hubble volume in the
gravity is obtained in
Section 5.3:
, The quadratic gravity and its symmetry are discussed in
Section 5.4.
The
Section 6 is devoted to the de Sitter decay due to the thermalization of matter by the de Sitter heat bath, and by the thermal fluctuations of the de Sitter state. These two mechanisms lead to different power laws of the decay, which may correspond two different epochs.
Section 7 and
Section 8 demonstrate how the local entropy of the de Sitter state allows us to consider the thermodynamics of the Schwarzschild black hole. The starting point of our consideration in
Section 7.3 is that the black hole can be obtained from the relaxation of the gravastar object – the black hole, which has the de Sitter core. It is important that the de Sitter interior of the gravastar is represented by the contracting de Sitter state. The contracting de Sitter in
Section 7.2 has negative Hubble parameter
, and thus the negative temperature
and negative entropy. The contracting and expanding de Sitter states can be considered as two phases obtained from the symmetric state of the Minkowski vacuum by the spontaneous breaking of the time reversal symmetry. These phases transform to each other under the time reversal,
. In this sense, the Hubble parameter
H can be considered as the order parameter of the symmetry breaking phase transition.
Since in the considered gravastar object, the cosmological and black hole horizons cancel each other, the gravastar has zero entropy. In the process of relaxation of the gravastar to the black hole, the de Sitter core with its negative entropy shrinks. This results in the Hawking-Bekenstein entropy of the black hole horizon (
Section 7.4). The negative entropy of the white hole is considered in
Section 7.5. The heat exchange between black holes in the multi-metric gravity is discussed in
Section 7.8.
Section 8 provides the alternative derivation of the thermodynamics of black and white holes using the macroscopic quantum tunneling.
4. Thermodynamics from the Heat Transfer in the Multi-Metric Gravity Ensemble
4.1. Multi-Metric Gravity
Since the heat exchange between the bodies or between the systems is the main source of the emergent thermodynamics,[
52] we can consider the de Sitter thermodynamics from the point of view of the heat transfer between different cosmological objects.
Such heat exchange can be discussed in the frame of the so-called multi-metric gravity, see Ref.[
53] and references therein. The corresponding model action of the whole system can be written as the sum of actions of the sub-systems in the same coordinate spacetime:
Then the Universe can be seen as the system of
N sub-Universes, each with its own gravitational coupling
, cosmological constant
and metric
.
Following Frogatt and Nielsen[
54] one can introduce
N independent tetrad fields
for
N fermionic species. In this multi-tetrad gravity one has the ensemble of the gravitational and cosmological constant actions:
And the corresponding ensemble of actions for the fermionic species:
This can be extended to the multi-fünfbein gravity, where instead of the tetrad fields the Dirac fermions are described by the rectangular vielbein (fünfbein).[
55]
On the other hand, gravity with multiple tetrad fields may come from the Akama-Diakonov-Wetterich theory, [
56,
57,
58,
59,
60,
61,
62,
63,
64] where the tetrads are formed as composite objects – the bilinear combinations of the fundamental fermionic fields:
In this approach, the metric is the quartet of fermions. In principle, the so called vestigial gravity can be realized, in which the bilinear combination of fermions in Equation (
32) is zero,
, while the metric – the quartet of fermions – is nonzero:[
65]
4.2. Heat Exchange in Multi-Metric Gravity
The heat exchange between the sub-Universes leads to their equilibration with formation of the common expansion rate and thus the common temperature. We consider first the system of two Universes, assuming that in each of them the entropy of horizon obeys the area law, and show that the maximum entropy corresponds to the state in which both states have the same expansion rate.
In the de Sitter state, which is determined by the cosmological constant, the equation of state for the vacuum energy is
. The total vacuum energy is proportional to the volume
V of the system, if we assume that the volume
V is much larger than the Hubble volume,
, so that the boundary terms are not important. Then we have:
Let us assume that the bulk-surface correspondence is valid, i.e. the entropy of the Hubble volume
is equal to the Gibbons-Hawking entropy of cosmological horizon,
. Then the total entropy
in the volume
can be obtained from the entropy of the Hubble volume
:
Let us now consider two de Sitter sub-states with different values of the gravitational coupling,
and
, and different values of the Hubble parameter,
and
:
This corresponds to the higher dimensional analog of the bilayer graphene,[
66] where two 2+1 dimensional Universes are in the neighbouring layers of the 3+1 spacetime. In this interpretation we have two 3+1 dimensional Universes in the neighbouring layers in the 4+1 space.
The total energy and total entropy of two layers are (if the interaction between the layers is neglected):
Let us now allow for the energy exchange (the heat exchange) between these two Universes (analogs of the two layers of graphene). This exchange can be realized by the matter field, which interacts with both metrics. It leads to the variations of the Hubble parameters
and
at fixed
. If we ignore the thermalization of matter by de Sitter environment, the heat exchange will finally produce the equilibrium state with the maximum entropy
S, in which the Hubble parameters become equal:
The equilibration of the Hubble parameters demonstrates that the Hubble parameter (with some numerical factor) plays the role of the temperature of the de Sitter Universe.
The temperature of the de Sitter Universe can be obtained by variation over the Hubble parameter:
with
in equilibrium.
In case of the arbitrary number
N of the sub-Universes, the heat exchange between them leads to the state of the Universe in which all the sub-Universes coherently expand with the same rate
H, i.e., with the same de Sitter metric in all the subsystems. The whole Universe has the gravitational coupling
K equal to the sum of the individual couplings in the sub-Universes and the vacuum energy density equal to the sum of energy densities of subsystems:
with
.
4.3. Thermodynamics from the Multi-Metric Ensemble
Let us remind that in the above approach we used the bulk-horizon correspondence , which finally leads to the equilibrium Universe with temperature . Let us now consider the thermodynamics of the whole de Sitter system without assumption about the entropy of the cosmological horizon. For that we consider the statistical ensemble of N de Sitter sub-Universes with random Hubble parameters . This is the extension of the multi-metric gravity to the statistical ensemble with the randomly distributed parameters and .
For large N, the random distribution of the parameters results in the exponential behaviour of the distribution functions, , with the same parameter T for all subsystems. As in the statistical ensemble of atoms, where the temperature of the system is determined by the physical processes, the temperature of the ensemble of the sub-Universes factor is also determined by the physical processes. In our case it is the of the behaviour of matter (atom) in the de Sitter environment, which gives . This connection between T and H is rather natural. Both, the parameter T, which plays the role of temperature, and the Hubble parameter H are the quantities which in equilibrium become common for all the subsystems in the ensemble, and they have the same dimension of inverse time, .
The physical temperature in turn gives rise to the total entropy and to the local entropy, . So, in this scenario the de Sitter entropy comes from a set of many randomly distributed subsystems with the expansion rates . Due to the heat exchange at fixed total energy these states are organized in the equilibrium thermal state, which corresponds to the coherent de Sitter expansion of the whole system. The coherence due to thermalization may explain the horizon problem, i.e. why the causally-disconnected regions of the CMB are in thermal equilibrium.
4.4. Regularization vs Thermalization
The multi-metric ensemble may include the ensemble of
N species of Weyl or Dirac fermions. At large
N, all tetrads in the random ensemble approach the same value,
, and thus in the equilibrium state all fermionic species experience the same geometry. In Refs. [
54,
67] the formation of the common Lorentz invariance for different fermionic species is also considered. But this is achieved by the renormalization group effect in the infrared limit, instead of thermalization. This suggests the possible connection between renormalization and thermalization.
One may expect that the heat exchange between subsystems leads not only to the coherence of the de Sitter states, but to the general coherence of the metric fields, when the metric fields of the subsystems become equal, thus forming the common metric . If this is true, this could be some kind of the thermodynamic gravity, but without using the holographic principle.
4.5. Coherence vs Thermalization
At first glance this formation of the coherently expanding state from the ensemble of the microstates looks similar to the formation of the coherent spin precession (magnon BEC) from the incoherent precessions about the local magnetic fields with random frequencies
.[
68] These random frequencies correspond to the random Hubble parameters
in different sub-Universes. The coherence of precession develops due to the spin currents between the regions of the local precessions – the analog of the heat exchange between the sub-Universes. The formed common frequency
of the coherent precession corresponds to the formed common Hubble parameter
H of the large Universe. Moreover, they have the same dimension of the inverse time,
, while the dimensionless magnon number (or the spin projection
) corresponds to the entropy which is also dimensionless.
However, the source of the coherence is the exchange of spin instead of the exchange of the energies. As a result the formation of the coherent state of spin precession is due to minimization of the total energy E at fixed projection of the total spin on magnetic field. This leads to the common frequency, which plays the role of the chemical potential for magnons, which emerges due to the exchange of quasiparticles (magnons) between the regions. That is why this process is quite opposite to the formation of the common temperature, where the total energy is fixed, while entropy reaches its maximum value.
Anyway, in all the cases the parameters, which are the same in all subsystems in equilibrium – common frequency
, common chemical potential
, common temperature
T, common angular velocity
and now also the common Hubble parameter
H – all of them have the same dimension of inverse time,
. In
Section 4.6 it is shown that the Hubble parameter
H as the thermodynamic quantity enters the chiral anomaly effects together with the conventional variables
T,
and
.
4.6. De Sitter Contribution to Chiral Anomaly
As the thermodynamic quantity, the Hubble parameter
H participates in different thermodynamical effects. We consider this on example of the chiral vortical effect – the appearance of the chiral current in fermionic systems in the presence of rotation. For Dirac fermions in the flat spacetime, the chiral current
contains the following contributions:[
69,
70,
71,
72,
73]
In the de Sitter state the gravitational thermodynamical variable – the curvature
– is added.[
74,
75] According to Ref. [
75] the gradient expansion gives the following contribution to the chiral current, which is very similar to the contributions of other thermodynamic quantities in Equation (
42):
The same term is obtained for the anti-de Sitter spacetime where
.[
76] Also, in Ref.[
74] the curvature term comes from the shift of the fermionic mass gap due to curvature,
, and this leads to the Equation (
43) with opposite sign.
Comparison of Equation (
43) with Equation (
42) demonstrates that there is the difference between the contribution
in Equation (
42), which comes from the temperature of matter, and the contribution
from the temperature
of the de Sitter environment in Equation (
43). However, it is possible that the more rigorous calculations (beyond the gradient expansion, with the proper conservation laws and with the proper limit cases) can modify the coefficient in Equation (
43). It is not excluded that these two contributions may cancel each other when the matter and the gravitational background are in equilibrium and thus have the same temperature. Such cancellation of the currents generated by two different mixed gravitational anomalies in rotating chiral liquid under the full equilibrium was found in Ref. [
77]. This supports the Bloch theorem on the absence of the total current in equilibrium, see also Refs. [
78,
79,
80].
Anyway, the participation of the curvature in the thermodynamics of the chiral anomaly demonstrates the uniqueness of the de Sitter state in providing the contributions of gravitational variables to different thermodynamic effects together with the traditional thermodynamic variables, such as temperature, chemical potential, angular velocity, electric and magnetic fields.
9. Conclusion
The starting point of our consideration was that matter immersed in the de Sitter vacuum feels this vacuum as the heat bath with the local temperature , where H is the Hubble parameter. This temperature has no relation to the cosmological horizon, and to the Hawking radiation from the cosmological horizon. However, it is exactly twice the Gibbons-Hawking temperature, . The reason for such relation is the specific symmetry of the de Sitter space-time, which is similar to the invariance under translations in the Minkowski vacuum.
There are also the discrete symmetries, which are important for consideration of the thermodynamics of the de Sitter. It represents one of the two degenerate states formed by the broken time reversal symmetry. These states are the expanding and contracting de Sitter states. They are obtained from each other by the time reversal transformation, . Another broken discrete symmetry corresponds to the reversal of the sign of the scalar curvature, . This symmetry operation transforms the de Sitter state to the anti-de Sitter. This symmetry is spontaneously broken by the linear in term in the Einstein action, .
The local thermodynamics of the de Sitter state in the Einstein gravity gives rise to the Gibbons-Hawking area law for the total entropy inside the cosmological horizon. We extended the consideration of the local thermodynamics to the gravity and obtained the same area law, but with the modified gravitational coupling . The agreement with the traditional global thermodynamics of de Sitter supports the suggestion that the de Sitter vacuum is the thermal state with the local temperature , and that the local thermodynamics is based on the thermodynamically conjugate gravitational variables K and . This pair of the non-extensive gravitational variables is similar to the pair of the electrodynamic variables, electric field and electric induction , which participate in the thermodynamics of dielectrics. The gravitational variables modify the thermodynamic Gibbs-Duhem relation, due to which the thermal properties of the de Sitter state become similar to that of the Zel’dovich stiff matter and of the non-relativistic Fermi liquid.
The local temperature leads to the multiple creation of particles, if even only single electron is introduced to the de Sitter vacuum. This results in the thermal instability of the de Sitter state towards the formation of matter, and to further thermalization of this matter by the de Sitter heat bath. The process of thermalization of matter by the de Sitter heat bath, which takes place without the effects from the cosmological horizon, leads to the decay of the vacuum energy density. As distinct from this process, the possibility of instability of the de Sitter state due to the Hawking radiation from the cosmological horizon is still controversial.
We considered two scenarios of the vacuum decay, which give two different power laws of decay. One of them reproduces the result of the Padmanabhan model.[
113] The second one is based on the thermal fluctuations in the de Sitter heat bath. It leads to the reasonable values of the dark energy and dark matter in the present time, and these values are not sensitive to the initial state of the Universe. This scenario suggests the simultaneous solution of three cosmological constant problems: why the cosmological constant is not large; why the dark energy is on the order of dark matter; and why they have the present order of magnitude.
Using local thermodynamics with the local temperature
, we obtained the connection between the bulk entropy of the Hubble volume, and the surface entropy of the cosmological horizon
. This suggests a kind of the bulk-surface correspondence, which may have the holographic origin.[
182,
183,
184] It would be interesting to check this correspondence using the more general extensions of the Einstein gravity and also different types of the generalized entropy.[
86,
185,
186,
187,
188] It is important that such connection takes place only in the
spacetime, where there is the special symmetry due to which both gravitational variables
K and
have the mass dimension 2, the same as the electrodynamic variables, electric field
and electric induction
.
We also discussed the thermodynamics of de Sitter in the frame of the statistical ensemble of the multi-metric gravities. The heat exchange between different "sub-Universes" in the ensemble leads to the common de Sitter expansion with the common temperature . Application of the local thermodynamics to the entropy of the Schwarzschild black hole was also considered. We obtained the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of black hole from the negative entropy of the contracting de Sitter core of the gravastar object.
9.1. Thermodynamic Variables vs Canonical Variables
We considered the dynamics and thermodynamics of the black hole in case of the varying gravitational coupling
. The gravitational coupling
serves as the thermodynamic variable, which is thermodynamic conjugate to
, where
and
are correspondingly the area of the black hole horizon and Hawking temperature. The corresponding first law of the black hole is modified, see Equation (
98). The corresponding adiabatic invariant is the entropy
, and it is this invariant which should be quantized, if the Bekenstein conjecture is correct. This is in agreement with observation of Ted Jacobson [
189], that it is the entropy that does not change under renormalization of
, rather than the area. This suggests the alternative quantization scheme for the black hole. While
and
are dimensionful and cannot be quantized, the entropy is dimensionless and thus can be quantized in terms of some fundamental numbers.
On the quantum level the dynamically conjugate variables of the black hole physics are and . This allows us to consider the transition from the black hole to the white hole as quantum tunneling in the semiclassical approximation, which is valid when the action is large. The classical trajectory of the black hole crosses the branch point at , and then continues along the other branch, where the area , which corresponds to the white hole. The obtained tunneling exponent demonstrates that the transition can be considered as thermodynamic fluctuation, if the entropy of the white hole (with the same mass M as the black hole) is negative, .