Consistent NEC-violation: towards creating a universe in the laboratory
  Null Energy Condition (NEC) can be violated in a consistent way in models
with unconventional kinetic terms, notably, in Galileon theories and their
generalizations. We make use of one of these, the scale-invariant kinetic
braiding model, to discuss whether a universe can in principle be created by
man-made processes. We find that even though the simplest models of this sort
can have both healthy Minkowski vacuum and consistent NEC-violating phase,
there is an obstruction for creating a universe in a straightforward fashion.
To get around this obstruction, we design a more complicated model, and present
a scenario for the creation of a universe in the laboratory.
