Related papers: Why there is something rather than nothing (out of…
We present an overview of a recently suggested new model of quantum initial conditions for the Universe in the form of a cosmological density matrix. This density matrix originally suggested in the Euclidean quantum gravity framework turns…
We suggest a novel picture of the quantum Universe -- its creation is described by the {\em density matrix} defined by the Euclidean path integral. This yields an ensemble of universes -- a cosmological landscape -- in a mixed state which…
Quantum creation of the universe is described by the {\em density matrix} defined by the Euclidean path integral. This yields an ensemble of universes -- a cosmological landscape -- in a mixed quasi-thermal state which is shown to be…
We compute, from first principles, the quantum fluctuations about instanton saddle points of the Euclidean path integral for Einstein gravity coupled to a scalar field. The Euclidean two-point correlator is analytically continued into the…
The creation of a quantum Universe is described by a {\em density matrix} which yields an ensemble of universes with the cosmological constant limited to a bounded range $\Lambda_{\rm min}\leq \Lambda \leq \Lambda_{\rm max}$. The domain…
In a unified picture both inflation and present dynamical dark energy arise from the same scalar field. The history of the Universe describes a crossover from a scale invariant "past fixed point" where all particles are massless, to a…
Introduced by Boltzmann under the name "monode," the microcanonical ensemble serves as the fundamental representation of equilibrium thermodynamics in statistical mechanics by counting all possible realizations of a system's states.…
While there does not at this time exist a complete canonical theory of full 3+1 quantum gravity, there does appear to be a satisfactory canonical quantization of minisuperspace models. The method requires no `choice of time variable' and…
We discuss a novel scenario for early cosmology, when the inflationary quasi-de Sitter phase dynamically originates from the initial quantum state represented by the microcanonical density matrix. This genuine quantum effect occurs as a…
Quantum cosmology based on Lorentzian path integrals is a promising avenue. However, many previous works allow non-Lorentzian configurations by integrating the squared scale factor over the whole real line. Here we show that restricting the…
We numerically study the Euclidean quantum cosmology of a closed, homogeneous and isotropic universe with a cosmological constant. A dust field acts as a clock, and we compute the ground state wavefunction, correlation function, and mean…
Taking into account only luminous objects, the kinematics of clusters of galaxies, galaxies and their interior, require a much higher mass than the luminous one to explain the observations. This situation has provoked more than 30 years of…
We discuss the O(4) invariant perturbation modes of cosmological instantons. These modes are spatially homogeneous in Lorentzian spacetime and thus not relevant to density perturbations. But their properties are important in establishing…
Old and new puzzles of cosmology are reexamined from the point of view of quantum theory of the universe developed here. It is shown that in proposed approach the difficulties of the standard cosmology do not arise. The theory predicts the…
Observations of the cosmic microwave sky are revealing the primordial non-uniformities from which all structure in the Universe grew. The only known physical mechanism for generating the inhomogeneities we see involves the amplification of…
A variety of quantum gravity models (including spin foams) can be described using a path integral formulation. A path integral has a well-known statistical mechanical interpretation in connection with a canonical ensemble. In this sense, a…
The path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, i.e., the idea that the evolution of a quantum system is determined as a sum over all the possible trajectories that would take the system from the initial to its final state of its…
We show that the late-time acceleration of the universe can be understood as a codimension-one bifurcation of the Friedmann dynamical system in the variables $(H,\Omega)$. At a critical value of the density-parameter combination, a…
At very early times, the universe was not in a vacuum state. Under the assumtion that the deviation from equillibrium was large, in particular that it is higher than the scale of inflation, we analyse the conditions for local transitions…
We argue that theories with multiple axions generically contain a large number of vacua that can account for the smallness of the cosmological constant. In a theory with N axions, the dominant instantons with charges Q determine the…