Related papers: What if? - Exploring the Multiverse through Euclid…
Euclidean wormholes have played a key role in the recent ``disorder averaged" approaches to quantum gravity and holography, but are typically only considered in somewhat special theories of gravity, such as theories in low dimensions or…
We analyze quantum-mechanical counterpart of Newtonian cosmology and show that effects of zero-point motion eliminate classical density singularity. Quantum effects are particularly significant for closed Universes where without the…
This essay discusses recent progress on Euclidean wormholes as candidate contributions to the Universe's initial quantum state. The comparison with the Hartle-Hawking no-boundary proposal highlights both a conceptual affinity and genuine…
We propose a new type of wavefunction for the universe computed from the Euclidean path integral, with asymptotically $AdS$ boundary conditions. In the semiclassical limit, it describes a Euclidean (half)-wormhole geometry, exhibiting a…
The theory of the inflationary multiverse changes the way we think about our place in the world. According to its most popular version, our world may consist of infinitely many exponentially large parts, exhibiting different sets of…
In this paper it is presented the model of a multiverse made up of entangled pairs of universes. The arrow of time obtained from the principles of thermodynamics and the arrow of time given by the thermodynamics of entanglement for single…
An unresolved question in inflationary cosmology is the assignment of probabilities to different types of events that can occur in the eternally inflating multiverse. We explore the possibility that the resolution of this "measure problem"…
Chain inflation takes place in the string theory landscape as the universe tunnels rapidly through a series of ever lower energy vacua such as may be characterized by quantized changes in four form fluxes. The string landscape may be well…
Why (and how) the Universe was born is one of the ultimate questions in physics. Another big puzzle is about the arrow of time: why is there only one direction of time? Are these two issues related? One way to solve both puzzles at one…
The inflationary scenario has become the paradigm of early universe cosmology, and - in conjuction with ideas from superstring theory - has led to speculations about an "inflationary multiverse". From a point of view of phenomenology, the…
At the minisuperspace level of homogeneous models, the bare probability for a classical universe has a huge peak at small universes for the Hartle-Hawking `no-boundary' wavefunction, in contrast to the suppression at small universes for the…
We construct a large number of exact solutions of three-dimensional gravity with heavy matter particles that generalize the construction of Antonini, Sasieta, and Swingle (AS${}^2$), argued to define CFT states dual to a spacetime with a…
In light of the recent swampland conjectures, we explore quantum cosmology and eternal inflation beyond the slow roll regime. We consider a model of a closed universe with a scalar field $\phi$ in the framework of tunneling approach to…
We study wormhole as the solution of the Wheeler-deWitt (WdW ) equation satisfying Hawking-Page wormhole boundary conditions in Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) cosmology. The quantum wormholes are formulated with arbitrary factor ordering…
In the inflationary era, black holes came into existence together with the universe through the quantum process of pair creation. We calculate the pair creation rate from the no boundary proposal for the wave function of the universe. Our…
There are hints that the connectivity of space-time in quantum gravity could emerge from entanglement, and it has further been proposed that any two entangled particles may be connected by a quantum wormhole. One way to test this proposal…
To explore the possibility that an inflationary universe can be created out of a stable particle in the laboratory, we consider the classical and quantum dynamics of a magnetic monopole in the thin-shell approximation. Classically there are…
We argue that the total number of distinguishable locally Friedmann universes generated by eternal inflation is proportional to the exponent of the entropy of inflationary perturbations and is limited by e^{e^{3 N}}, where N is the number…
The Wheeler-DeWitt equation in the minisuperspace approximation is studied in four different models. Under certain circumstances each model leads to a tunneling potential and under the same circumstances the classical version of each model…
We investigate quantum tunneling in the theory of a complex scalar field with a global $U(1)$ symmetry when the charge density of the initial configuration does not vanish. We discuss the possible final configurations and set up the…