UNIVERSE DECAY AND CHANGING THE COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT

If superspace time is taken to be det(), where ij is the three-metric, then the cosmological constant plays the role of a (mass)2 term in the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. Second quantization allows particles of different mass to decay into one another if they are interacting. Likewise, adding interactions to the third-quantized Lagrangian allows universes with different cosmological constants to decay into one another. We consider a simple model with two types of universes, one of cosmological constant zero and the other nonzero. We compute the probability of decay and production for each type of universe. © 1990 The American Physical Society.