The impact of non-minimally coupled gravity on vacuum stability

We consider vacuum decay in the presence of a non-minimal coupling to gravity. We extend the usual thin-wall solution to include the non-minimal coupling. We also perform a full numerical study and discuss the validity of the new thin-wall approximation. Implications of a large cosmological constant, whose influence on the geometry boosts the tunneling rate, are discussed. Our results show that the influence of the non-minimal coupling differs significantly between the cases of Minkowski and de Sitter backgrounds. In the latter the decay probability quickly decreases when the coupling grows and in fact the vacuum can be made absolutely stable simply due to introduction of the non-minimal coupling. In the case of Minkowski background the effect is much weaker and the decay rate even increases for small values of the non-minimal coupling.