English

Wave function of the Universe as a sum over eventually inflating universes

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2022-07-18 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We consider a proposal to define the wave function of the Universe as a sum over spacetimes that eventually inflate. In the minisuperspace model, we explicitly show that a simple family of initial conditions, parametrized by a positive real number a0a_0, can be imposed to realise this prescription. The resulting wave function is found to be proportional to the Hartle-Hawking wave function and its dependence on a0a_0 is only through an overall phase factor. Motivated by this observation, we ask whether it is possible to analytically extend a0a_0 to an extended region Dˉ\bar{\mathcal{D}} in complex a0a_0-plane, while retaining the Hartle-Hawking form of the wave function. We use the condition for convergence of path integral and a recent theorem due to Kontsevich and Segal, further extended by Witten, to explicitly find Dˉ\bar{\mathcal{D}}. Interestingly, a special point on the boundary of Dˉ\bar{\mathcal{D}} recovers the exact no-boundary wave function. Following that, we show that our prescription leads to a family of quantum states for the perturbations, which give rise to scale-invariant power spectra. If we demand, as an extra ingredient to our prescription, a matching condition at the "no-boundary point" in Dˉ\bar{\mathcal{D}}, we converge on a unique quantum state for the perturbations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2112.04522,
  title  = {Wave function of the Universe as a sum over eventually inflating universes},
  author = {Karthik Rajeev},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.04522},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

16 pages, 3 figures, published version

R2 v1 2026-06-24T08:09:40.718Z