Related papers: Early-Time Measure in Eternal Inflation

We propose a new measure for eternal inflation, based on search optimization and first-passage statistics. This work builds on the dynamical selection mechanism for vacua based on search optimization proposed recently by the author and…

Probabilities in eternal inflation are traditionally defined as limiting frequency distributions, but a unique and unambiguous probability measure remains elusive. In this paper, we present a different approach, based on Bayesian reasoning.…

We consider the cosmological dynamics associated with volume weighted measures of eternal inflation, in the Bousso-Polchinski model of the string theory landscape. We find that this measure predicts that observers are most likely to find…

We develop our recent suggestion that inflation may be made past eternal, so that there is no initial cosmological singularity or "beginning of time". Inflation with multiple vacua generically approaches a steady-state statistical…

A striking feature of our universe is its near criticality. The cosmological constant and weak hierarchy problems, as well as the metastability of the electroweak vacuum, can all be understood as problems of criticality. This suggests a…

Depending on the type and arrangement of metastable vacua in the theory, initial conditions in a de Sitter vacuum with arbitrarily large entropy can be compatible with the observed arrow of time, if the causal patch or related measures are…

Eternal inflation produces pocket universes with all physically allowed vacua and histories. Some of these pocket universes might contain a phase of slow-roll inflation, some might undergo cycles of cosmological evolution and some might…

In recent literature on eternal inflation, a number of measures have been introduced which attempt to assign probabilities to different pocket universes by counting the number of each type of pocket according to a specific procedure. We…

We argue that in the context of eternal inflation in the landscape, making predictions for cosmological -- and possibly particle physics -- observables requires a measure on the possible cosmological histories as opposed to one on the vacua…

We consider eternal inflation in hilltop-type inflation models, favored by current data, in which the scalar field in inflation rolls off of a local maximum of the potential. Unlike chaotic or plateau-type inflation models, in hilltop…

In the global description of eternal inflation, probabilities for vacua are notoriously ambiguous. The local point of view is preferred by holography and naturally picks out a simple probability measure. It is insensitive to large expansion…

In generic models of cosmological inflation, quantum fluctuations strongly influence the spacetime metric and produce infinitely many regions where the end of inflation (reheating) is delayed until arbitrarily late times. The geometry of…

We show that the geometry of cutoffs on eternal inflation strongly constrains predictions for the timescales of vacuum domination, curvature domination, and observation. We consider three measure proposals: the causal patch, the fat…

In the presence of a short-distance cutoff, the choice of a vacuum state in an inflating, non-de Sitter universe is unavoidably ambiguous. The ambiguity is related to the time at which initial conditions for the mode functions are specified…

During eternal inflation, a landscape of vacua can be populated by the nucleation of bubbles. These bubbles inevitably collide, and collisions sometimes displace the field into a new minimum in a process known as a classical transition. In…

The mechanism for triggering the universe inflation could be that at very early periods the time variable was discrete instead of smooth. Alternatively, and perhaps equivalently, it could be the consequence that the metrics of the early…

False-vacuum eternal inflation can be described as a random walk on the network of vacua of the string landscape. In this paper we show that the problem can be mapped naturally to a problem of directed percolation. The mapping relies on two…

We consider the eternal inflation scenario of the slow-roll/chaotic type with the additional element of an objective collapse of the wave function. The incorporation of this new agent to the traditional inflationary setting might represent…

In pursuing the intriguing resemblance of the Einstein equations to thermodynamic equations, most sharply seen in systems possessing horizons, we suggest that eternal inflation of the stochastic type may be a fruitful phenomenon to explore.…

Inflation with an inflection point potential is a popular model for producing primordial black holes. The potential near the inflection point is approximately flat, with a local maximum next to a local minimum, prone to eternal inflation.…