Related papers: Measure and Probability in Cosmology
We study cosmological solutions for the very early universe beginning at the Planck scale for a universe containing radiation, curvature and, as a simplification of a possible scalar field potential, a cosmological constant term. The…
We explore the cosmological solutions of a recently proposed extension of General Relativity with a Lorentz-invariant mass term. We show that the same constraint that removes the Boulware-Deser ghost in this theory also prohibits the…
Even when completely and consistently formulated, a fundamental theory of physics and cosmological boundary conditions may not give unambiguous and unique predictions for the universe we observe; indeed inflation, string/M theory, and…
Change and local spatial variation are missing in canonical General Relativity's observables as usually defined, part of the problem of time. Definitions can be tested using equivalent formulations, non-gauge and gauge, because they must…
The quantum gravitational scale of inflation is calculated by finding a sharp probability peak in the distribution function of chaotic inflationary cosmologies driven by a scalar field with large negative constant $\xi$ of nonminimal…
Recent developments in gravitational path integrals indicate that the nonperturbative physical Hilbert space of a closed universe is one-dimensional within each superselection sector. This raises a basic puzzle: how can a unique…
Cosmological fine-tuning has traditionally been associated with the narrowness of the intervals in which the parameters of the physical models must be located to make life possible. A more thorough approach focuses on the probability of the…
We perform a cosmographic analysis using several cosmological observables such as the luminosity distance moduli, the volume distance, the angular diameter distance and the Hubble parameter. These quantities are determined using different…
A fundamental assumption in the standard model of cosmology is that the Universe is isotropic on large scales. Breaking this assumption leads to a set of solutions to Einstein's field equations, known as Bianchi cosmologies, only a subset…
The Hubble constant problem is the discrepancy between different measurements of the Hubble constant in different scales. We show that this problem can be resolved within the general relativistic framework of the perturbation theory in the…
Eternal inflation predicts our observable universe lies within a bubble (or pocket universe) embedded in a volume of inflating space. The interior of the bubble undergoes inflation and standard cosmology, while the bubble walls expand…
Averaging in general relativity is a complicated operation, due to the general covariance of the theory and the non-linearity of Einstein's equations. The latter of these ensures that smoothing spacetime over cosmological scales does not…
The inhomogeneous fluctuations that underlie structure formation - galaxies and CMB hotspots - might have been seeded by quantum cosmological fluctuations, as magnified by some inflationary mechanism. The Halliwell-Hawking model for these,…
We revisit the Hartle-Hawking no-boundary proposal. To extract probabilities, one must use the gravitational path integral (GPI) to compute not only the no-boundary amplitude, but also the norms by which its square is divided. We find that…
Eternally inflating universes can contain large thermalized regions with different values of the constants of Nature and with different density fluctuation spectra. To find the probability for a `typical' observer to detect a certain set of…
A nontrivial topology of the spatial section of the universe is an observable, which can be probed for all locally homogeneous and isotropic universes, without any assumption on the cosmological density parameters. We discuss how one can…
We find that general relativity can be naturally free of cosmological singularities. Several nonsingular models are currently available that either assume ad hoc matter contents, or are nonsingular only over a sector of solution space of…
As observers of the universe we are quantum physical systems within it. If the universe is very large in space and/or time, the probability becomes significant that the data on which we base predictions is replicated at other locations in…
Everlasting inflation has far-reaching implications for cosmology and the standing of self-localizing inferences made by observers, which have been subjects of renewed interest in light of the growing acceptance of theory landscapes and the…
The basic hypothesis of a post-Copernican Cosmological theory is that {\em all the points} of the Universe have to be essentially equivalent: this hypothesis is required in order to avoid any privileged {\em observer}. This assumption has…