Eternal Inflation, past and future
Abstract
Cosmological inflation, if it occurred, radically alters the picture of the `big bang', which would merely point to reheating at the end of inflation. Moreover, this reheating may be only local, so that inflation continues elsewhere and forever, continually spawning big-bang-like regions. This chapter reviews this idea of `eternal inflation', then focuses on what this may mean for the ultimate beginning of the universe. In particular, I will argue that given eternal inflation, the universe may be free of a cosmological initial singularity, might be eternal (and eternally inflating) to the past, and might obey an interesting sort of cosmological time-symmetry.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0712.0571,
title = {Eternal Inflation, past and future},
author = {Anthony Aguirre},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0712.0571},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
38 pp., 6 color figures. Contribution to R. Vaas (ed.): Beyond the Big Bang. Springer 2008