Related papers: Lorentzian Vacuum Transitions: Open or Closed Univ…
I point out that the usual Coleman-de Luccia analysis of tunnelling via instantons between perturbatively stable minima using the thin-wall approximation misses one of the effects of gravitational backreaction on the on-shell action and…
In this paper, we analyze the dynamics of an isotropic closed Universe in the presence of a cosmological constant term and we compare its behavior in the standard Wheeler-DeWitt equation approach with the one when a Lagrangian fluid is…
Wheeler-DeWitt equation is applied to $k > 0$ Friedmann Robertson Walker metric with various types of matter. It is shown that if the Universe ends in the matter dominated era (e.g., radiation or pressureless gas) with zero cosmological…
In the minisuperspace models of quantum cosmology, the absence of time in the Wheeler-DeWitt (constraint) equation, is the main point leading to the generally accepted conclusion that in the quantum cosmology there is no possibility to…
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 study canonical quantization of a closed Euclidean universe with a cosmological constant and a massless scalar field. The closed Euclidean universe with an ordinary matter state can be matched at a finite radius only with the closed…
In the present work, we quantize a closed Friedmann-Robertson-Walker model in the presence of a positive cosmological constant and radiation. It gives rise to a Wheeler-DeWitt equation for the scale factor which has the form of a…
We analyze the canonical quantum dynamics of the isotropic Universe in a metric approach by adopting a self-interacting scalar field as relational time. When the potential term is absent we are able to associate the the expanding and…
We illustrate the crucial role played by decoherence (consistency of quantum histories) in extracting consistent quantum probabilities for alternative histories in quantum cosmology. Specifically, within a Wheeler-DeWitt quantization of a…
We discuss aspects of the problem of assigning probabilities in eternal inflation. In particular, we investigate a recent suggestion that the lowest energy de Sitter vacuum in the landscape is effectively stable. The associated proposal for…
We perform a minisuperspace analysis of an information-theoretic nonlinear Wheeler-deWitt (WDW) equation for de Sitter universes. The nonlinear WDW equation, which is in the form of a difference-differential equation, is transformed into a…
A massless scalar field without self interaction and string coupled to gravity is quantized in the framework of quantum cosmology using the Bohm-de Broglie interpretation. Gaussian superpositions of the quantum solutions of the…
Quantum gravity is fundamentally different from the non-gravitational quantum field theories in the sense that most of the techniques derived for the latter cannot be easily extended to the former. For example, correlation functions in…
We analyse a classical model of gravitation coupled to a self interacting scalar field. We show that, within the context of this model for Robertson-Walker cosmologies, there exist solutions in the spatially non-flat cases exhibiting…
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…
Multidimensional cosmological models with $n~(n > 1)$ Einstein spaces are discussed classically and with respect to canonical quantization. These models are integrable in the case of Ricci flat internal spaces. For negative curvature of the…
This is a pedagogical paper which explains some ideas in cosmology at a level accessible to undergraduate students. It does not use general relativity, but uses the ideas of Newtonian cosmology worked out by Milne and McCrea. The…
We discuss several aspects of quantum field theory of a scalar field in a Friedmann universe, clarifying and highlighting several conceptual and technical issues. (A) We show that one can map the dynamics of (1) a massless scalar field in a…
Vacuum decay in de Sitter space is a process of great physical interest, as it allows to rule out cosmological models in the early and current Universe. Its rate may be described in terms of an instanton in Euclidean space called bounce and…
In a quantum theory of cosmology spacetime behaves classically only in limited patches of the configuration space on which the wave function of the universe is defined. Quantum transitions can connect classical evolution in different…