36 research outputs found
Making predictions in the multiverse
I describe reasons to think we are living in an eternally inflating
multiverse where the observable "constants" of nature vary from place to place.
The major obstacle to making predictions in this context is that we must
regulate the infinities of eternal inflation. I review a number of proposed
regulators, or measures. Recent work has ruled out a number of measures by
showing that they conflict with observation, and focused attention on a few
proposals. Further, several different measures have been shown to be
equivalent. I describe some of the many nontrivial tests these measures will
face as we learn more from theory, experiment, and observation.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures; invited review for Classical and Quantum
Gravity; v2: references improve
Towards a gauge invariant volume-weighted probability measure for eternal inflation
An improved volume-weighted probability measure for eternal inflation is
proposed. For the models studied in this paper it leads to simple and
intuitively expected gauge-invariant results.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figs, few misprints corrected, comments adde
Anthropic prediction in a large toy landscape
The successful anthropic prediction of the cosmological constant depends
crucially on the assumption of a flat prior distribution. However, previous
calculations in simplified landscape models showed that the prior distribution
is staggered, suggesting a conflict with anthropic predictions. Here we
analytically calculate the full distribution, including the prior and anthropic
selection effects, in a toy landscape model with a realistic number of vacua,
. We show that it is possible for the fractal prior
distribution we find to behave as an effectively flat distribution in a wide
class of landscapes, depending on the regime of parameter space. Whether or not
this possibility is realized depends on presently unknown details of the
landscape.Comment: 13 page
Measures for a Transdimensional Multiverse
The multiverse/landscape paradigm that has emerged from eternal inflation and
string theory, describes a large-scale multiverse populated by "pocket
universes" which come in a huge variety of different types, including different
dimensionalities. In order to make predictions in the multiverse, we need a
probability measure. In landscapes, the scale factor cutoff measure
has been previously shown to have a number of attractive properties. Here we
consider possible generalizations of this measure to a transdimensional
multiverse. We find that a straightforward extension of scale factor cutoff to
the transdimensional case gives a measure that strongly disfavors large amounts
of slow-roll inflation and predicts low values for the density parameter
, in conflict with observations. A suitable generalization, which
retains all the good properties of the original measure, is the "volume factor"
cutoff, which regularizes the infinite spacetime volume using cutoff surfaces
of constant volume expansion factor.Comment: 30 pages, 1 figure Minor revisions, reference adde
Cosmological Measures without Volume Weighting
Many cosmologists (myself included) have advocated volume weighting for the
cosmological measure problem, weighting spatial hypersurfaces by their volume.
However, this often leads to the Boltzmann brain problem, that almost all
observations would be by momentary Boltzmann brains that arise very briefly as
quantum fluctuations in the late universe when it has expanded to a huge size,
so that our observations (too ordered for Boltzmann brains) would be highly
atypical and unlikely. Here it is suggested that volume weighting may be a
mistake. Volume averaging is advocated as an alternative. One consequence may
be a loss of the argument that eternal inflation gives a nonzero probability
that our universe now has infinite volume.Comment: 15 pages, LaTeX, added references for constant-H hypersurfaces and
also an idea for minimal-flux hypersurface
A status report on the observability of cosmic bubble collisions
In the picture of eternal inflation as driven by a scalar potential with
multiple minima, our observable universe resides inside one of many bubbles
formed from transitions out of a false vacuum. These bubbles necessarily
collide, upsetting the homogeneity and isotropy of our bubble interior, and
possibly leading to detectable signatures in the observable portion of our
bubble, potentially in the Cosmic Microwave Background or other precision
cosmological probes. This constitutes a direct experimental test of eternal
inflation and the landscape of string theory vacua. Assessing this possibility
roughly splits into answering three questions: What happens in a generic bubble
collision? What observational effects might be expected? How likely are we to
observe a collision? In this review we report the current progress on each of
these questions, improve upon a few of the existing results, and attempt to lay
out directions for future work.Comment: Review article; comments very welcome. 24 pages + 4 appendices; 19
color figures. (Revised version adds two figures, minor edits.
Cosmological equations and Thermodynamics on Apparent Horizon in Thick Braneworld
We derive the generalized Friedmann equation governing the cosmological
evolution inside the thick brane model in the presence of two curvature
correction terms: a four-dimensional scalar curvature from induced gravity on
the brane, and a five-dimensional Gauss-Bonnet curvature term. We find two
effective four-dimensional reductions of the Friedmann equation in some limits
and demonstrate that they can be rewritten as the first law of thermodynamics
on the apparent horizon of thick braneworld.Comment: 25 pages, no figure, a definition corrected, several references
added, more motivation and discussio
Anthropic prediction for a large multi-jump landscape
The assumption of a flat prior distribution plays a critical role in the
anthropic prediction of the cosmological constant. In a previous paper we
analytically calculated the distribution for the cosmological constant,
including the prior and anthropic selection effects, in a large toy
``single-jump'' landscape model. We showed that it is possible for the fractal
prior distribution we found to behave as an effectively flat distribution in a
wide class of landscapes, but only if the single jump size is large enough. We
extend this work here by investigating a large () toy
``multi-jump'' landscape model. The jump sizes range over three orders of
magnitude and an overall free parameter determines the absolute size of the
jumps. We will show that for ``large'' the distribution of probabilities of
vacua in the anthropic range is effectively flat, and thus the successful
anthropic prediction is validated. However, we argue that for small , the
distribution may not be smooth.Comment: 33 pages, 7 figures Minor revisions made and references added. arXiv
admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:0705.256
Loop Quantum Cosmology: A Status Report
The goal of this article is to provide an overview of the current state of
the art in loop quantum cosmology for three sets of audiences: young
researchers interested in entering this area; the quantum gravity community in
general; and, cosmologists who wish to apply loop quantum cosmology to probe
modifications in the standard paradigm of the early universe. An effort has
been made to streamline the material so that, as described at the end of
section I, each of these communities can read only the sections they are most
interested in, without a loss of continuity.Comment: 138 pages, 15 figures. Invited Topical Review, To appear in Classical
and Quantum Gravity. Typos corrected, clarifications and references adde