English

Anthropic prediction in a large toy landscape

High Energy Physics - Theory 2019-10-30 v3

Abstract

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, N10500N \sim 10^{500}. 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.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0705.2562,
  title  = {Anthropic prediction in a large toy landscape},
  author = {Ken D. Olum and Delia Schwartz-Perlov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0705.2562},
  year   = {2019}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T08:29:22.137Z