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Realising the no-boundary proposal of Hartle and Hawking as a consistent gravitational path integral has been a long-standing puzzle. In particular, it was demonstrated by Feldbrugge et al. that the sum over all universes starting from zero…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2019-06-04 Alice Di Tucci , Jean-Luc Lehners

Recently there has been a surge of interest in studying Lorentzian quantum cosmology using Picard-Lefschetz methods. The present paper aims to explore the Lorentzian path-integral of Gauss-Bonnet gravity in four spacetime dimensions with…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2021-06-16 Gaurav Narain

A review of the path integral approach to quantum cosmology and its relation to canonical quantisation. The initial derivation of the Hartle-Hawking and Vilenkin wavefunctions from the Euclidean Einstein-Hilbert action, and later, from the…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2022-10-14 Raymond Isichei

Different proposals for the wave function of the universe are analyzed, with an emphasis on various forms of the tunneling proposal. The issues discussed include the equivalence of the Lorentzian path integral and outgoing-wave proposals,…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2010-04-06 Alexander Vilenkin

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…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2023-12-01 Ding Jia

A calculation of the no-boundary wave-function of the universe is put forward for a spacetime with negative curvature. A semi-classical Robertson-Walker approximation is attempted and two solutions to the field equations, one Lorentzian and…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2007-05-23 G. Oliveira-Neto

In a quantum cosmological model consisting of a Euclidean region and a Lorentzian region, Hartle-Hawking's no-bounary wave function, and Linde's wave function and Vilenkin's tunneling wave function are briefly described and compared with…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2007-05-23 Sang Pyo Kim

In this paper, we delve into the gravitational path integral of Gauss-Bonnet gravity in four spacetime dimensions, in the mini-superspace approximation. Our primary focus lies in investigating the transition amplitude between distinct…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2024-01-09 Manishankar Ailiga , Shubhashis Mallik , Gaurav Narain

In 1983, Hartle and Hawking proposed the no-boundary proposal, suggesting that the universe has no beginning in the sense of a spacetime singularity or boundary. Nevertheless, there is an origin of time. Mathematically, this involves…

Differential Geometry · Mathematics 2026-03-26 N. E. Rieger , W. Hasse

Developments in theoretical cosmology in the recent decades show a close connection with particle physics, quantum gravity and unified theories. Answers or hints to many fundamental questions in cosmology like the homogeneity and isotropy…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2007-05-23 B. L. Hu

In two space-time dimensions, there is a theory of Lorentzian quantum gravity which can be defined by a rigorous, non-perturbative path integral and is inequivalent to the well-known theory of (Euclidean) quantum Liouville gravity. It has a…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2009-10-31 R. Loll , J. Ambjorn , K. N. Anagnostopoulos

In this paper we study some aspects of classical and quantum cosmology in the novel-Gauss-Bonnet (nGB) gravity in four space-time dimensions. Starting with a generalised Friedmann-Lema\^itre-Robertson Walker (FLRW) metric respecting…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2020-06-04 Gaurav Narain , Hai-Qing Zhang

Recent analysis of quantum cosmology has focused on the Lorentzian path integral formulations of both the no-boundary and tunneling proposals. However, it has been criticized that the wave function for linearized perturbations around a…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2024-07-09 Hiroki Matsui

It is shown that the standard no-boundary wave function has a natural expression in terms of a Lorentzian path integral with its contour defined by Picard-Lefschetz theory. The wave function is real, satisfies the Wheeler-DeWitt equation…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2017-08-16 Juan Diaz Dorronsoro , Jonathan J. Halliwell , James B. Hartle , Thomas Hertog , Oliver Janssen

A well-defined regularized path integral for Lorentzian quantum gravity in three and four dimensions is constructed, given in terms of a sum over dynamically triangulated causal space-times. Each Lorentzian geometry and its associated…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2009-10-31 J. Ambjorn , J. Jurkiewicz , R. Loll

The properties of the quantum universe on extremely small spacetime scales are studied in the semi-classical approach to the well-defined quantum model. It is shown that near the initial cosmological singularity point quantum gravity…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2010-04-30 V. E. Kuzmichev , V. V. Kuzmichev

We define a (semi-classical) path integral for gravity with Neumann boundary conditions in $D$ dimensions, and show how to relate this new partition function to the usual picture of Euclidean quantum gravity. We also write down the action…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2017-03-01 Chethan Krishnan , K. V. Pavan Kumar , Avinash Raju

We study the Hartle-Hawking no-boundary proposal in the framework of Ho\v{r}ava-Lifshitz gravity. The former is a prominent hypothesis that describes the quantum creation of the universe, while the latter is a potential theory of quantum…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2024-01-05 Hiroki Matsui , Shinji Mukohyama

We construct an effective cosmological spin-foam model for a (2+1) dimensional spatially flat universe, discretized on a hypercubical lattice, containing both space- and time-like regions. Our starting point is the recently proposed…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2025-04-17 Alexander F. Jercher , José Diogo Simão , Sebastian Steinhaus

We follow up the work, where in light of the Picard-Lefschetz thimble approach, we split up the real-time path integral into two parts: the initial density matrix part which can be represented via an ensemble of initial conditions, and the…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2020-01-29 Zong-Gang Mou , Paul M. Saffin , Anders Tranberg