English

The Wave Function of the Universe and CMB Fluctuations

High Energy Physics - Theory 2019-09-04 v5 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

The Hartle-Hawking and Tunneling (Vilenkin) wave functions are treated in the Hamiltonian formalism. We find that the leading (i.e. quadratic) terms in the fluctuations around a maximally symmetric background, are indeed Gaussian (rather than inverse Gaussian), for both types of wave function, when properly interpreted. However the suppression of non-Gaussianities and hence the recovery of the Bunch-Davies state is not transparent.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1811.12892,
  title  = {The Wave Function of the Universe and CMB Fluctuations},
  author = {S. P. de Alwis},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1811.12892},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

Some clarifications added, typos corrected, version to be published in PRD