Early-time measure in eternal inflation
From MaRDI portal
Publication:5099309
Asymptotic procedures (radiation, news functions, (mathcal{H} )-spaces, etc.) in general relativity and gravitational theory (83C30) Gravitational energy and conservation laws; groups of motions (83C40) Quantization of the gravitational field (83C45) Geometrodynamics and the holographic principle (83E05) Relativistic cosmology (83F05)
Abstract: In a situation like eternal inflation, where our data is replicated at infinitely-many other space-time events, it is necessary to make a prior assumption about our location to extract predictions. The principle of mediocrity entails that we live at asymptotic late times, when the occupational probabilities of vacua has settled to a near-equilibrium distribution. In this paper we further develop the idea that we instead exist during the approach to equilibrium, much earlier than the exponentially-long mixing time. In this case we are most likely to reside in vacua that are easily accessed dynamically. Using first-passage statistics, we prove that vacua that maximize their space-time volume at early times have: 1. maximal ever-hitting probability; 2. minimal mean first-passage time; and 3. minimal decay rate. These requirements are succinctly captured by an early-time measure. The idea that we live at early times is a predictive guiding principle, with many phenomenological implications. First, our vacuum should lie deep in a funneled region, akin to folding energy landscapes of proteins. Second, optimal landscape regions are characterized by relatively short-lived vacua, with lifetime of order the de Sitter Page time. For our vacuum, this lifetime is ~years, which is consistent with the Standard Model estimate due to Higgs metastability. Third, the measure favors vacua with small, positive vacuum energy. This can address the cosmological constant problem, provided there are sufficiently many vacua in the entire ensemble of funnels. As a concrete example, we study the Bousso-Polchinski lattice of flux vacua, and find that the early-time measure favors lattices with the fewest number of flux dimensions. This favors compactifications with a large hierarchy between the lightest modulus and all other K"ahler and complex structure moduli.
Recommendations
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1768769
- Eternal inflation and the present universe
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1749167
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 5663754
- The phase transition to eternal inflation
- Eternal inflation in light of Wheeler-DeWitt equation
- Inflationary universe in the presence of a minimal measurable length
- Eternal inflation with Liouville cosmology
- Predictions in eternal inflation
- Cosmological inflation with arbitrary initial conditions
Cites work
- A guide to first-passage processes
- Accessibility measure for eternal inflation: dynamical criticality and Higgs metastability
- Asymptotic symmetries in de Sitter and inflationary spacetimes
- Computational complexity of the landscape. I.
- Computational complexity of the landscape. II: Cosmological considerations
- Determining computational complexity from characteristic ``phase transitions
- Handbook of stochastic methods for physics, chemistry and the natural sciences.
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3145626 (Why is no real title available?)
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 2154309 (Why is no real title available?)
- Information in black hole radiation
- Living dangerously with low-energy supersymmetry
- Making predictions in the multiverse
- On the existence of \(n\)-geodesically complete or future complete solutions of Einstein's field equations with smooth asymptotic structure
- On the metastability of the Standard Model vacuum
- On the time taken by random walks on finite groups to visit every state
- Patient observers and non-perturbative infrared dynamics in inflation
- Phase transitions and the search problem
- Preference for a vanishingly small cosmological constant in supersymmetric vacua in a type IIB string theory model
- Probabilities in the inflationary multiverse
- Quantization of four-form fluxes and dynamical neutralization of the cosmological constant
- Quantum Transitions Between Minkowski and de Sitter Spacetimes
- Search optimization, funnel topography, and dynamical criticality on the string landscape
- Self-organised localisation
- Statistical distribution of the vacuum energy density in racetrack Kähler uplift models in string theory
- The centrality index of a graph
- The phase transition to eternal inflation
- The self-organized critical multiverse
- Tunneling in stochastic inflation
- Universality classes in nonequilibrium lattice systems
Cited in
(3)
This page was built for publication: Early-time measure in eternal inflation
Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q5099309)
