Related papers: No Rescue for the No Boundary Proposal
Given the observed cosmic acceleration, Leonard Susskind has presented the following argument against the Hartle-Hawking no-boundary proposal for the quantum state of the universe: It should most likely lead to a nearly empty large de…
In this work, we consider tunneling between non-metastable states in gravitational theories. Such processes arise in various contexts, e.g., in inflationary scenarios where the inflaton potential involves multiple fields or multiple…
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…
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…
In these lecture notes, I describe the motivation behind a recent formulation of a non-perturbative gravitational path integral for Lorentzian (instead of the usual Euclidean) space-times, and give a pedagogical introduction to its main…
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…
In this paper we study the Lorentzian path-integral of Gauss-Bonnet gravity in the mini-superspace approximation in four spacetime dimensions and investigate the transition amplitude from one configuration to another. Past studies motivate…
We show that the semi-classical analysis of generic Euclidean path integrals necessarily requires complexification of the action and measure, and consideration of complex saddle solutions. We demonstrate that complex saddle points have a…
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…
We discuss a no-boundary proposal for a subregion of the universe. In the classical approximation, this density matrix involves finding a specific classical solution of the equations of motion with no boundary. Beyond the usual no boundary…
One of the leading ideas for the beginning of the Universe is the Hartle-Hawking `No-Boundary Proposal.' Since the Cobordism Conjecture claims that any spacetime allows for a dynamical boundary, we suggest that one may equally well consider…
We have recently introduced a discrete model of Lorentzian quantum gravity, given as a regularized non-perturbative state sum over simplicial Lorentzian space-times, each possessing a unique Wick rotation to Euclidean signature. We…
We formulate a non-perturbative lattice model of two-dimensional Lorentzian quantum gravity by performing the path integral over geometries with a causal structure. The model can be solved exactly at the discretized level. Its continuum…
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…
The path integral of 4D Einstein-Hilbert gravity for the de Sitter-like Universe with fluctuations is investigated, and the transition amplitude from one boundary configuration to another is computed. The gravitational system is described…
The dimension of the Hilbert space of a quantum gravitational system can be written formally as a path integral partition function over Lorentzian metrics. We implement this in a 2+1 dimensional simplicial minisuperspace model in which the…
We study three dimensional $\mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetric abelian gauge theories with various matter contents living on a squashed sphere. In particular we focus on two problems: firstly we perform a Picard-Lefschetz decomposition of the…
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…
We propose a theory of quantum gravity which formulates the quantum theory as a nonperturbative path integral, where each spacetime history appears with a weight given by the exponentiated Einstein-Hilbert action of the corresponding causal…
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…