English

Why concave rather than convex inflaton potential?

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2018-11-06 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

The Planck data on cosmic microwave background indicates that the Starobinsky-type model with concave inflation potential is favored over the convex-type chaotic inflation. Is there any reason for that? Here we argue that if our universe began with a Euclidean wormhole, then the Starobinsky-type inflation is probabilistically favored. It is known that for a more generic choice of parameters than that originally assumed by Hartle and Hawking, the Hartle-Hawking wave function is dominated by Euclidean wormholes, which can be interpreted as the creation of two classical universes from nothing. We show that only one end of the wormhole can be classicalized for a convex potential, while both ends can be classicalized for a concave potential. The latter is therefore more probable.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1706.07784,
  title  = {Why concave rather than convex inflaton potential?},
  author = {Pisin Chen and Dong-han Yeom},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.07784},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

9 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:27:57.773Z