Related papers: Tunnelling geometries I. Analyticity, unitarity an…
In the Hartle-Hawking ``no boundary'' approach to quantum cosmology, a real tunneling geometry is a configuration that represents a transition from a compact Riemannian spacetime to a Lorentzian universe. I complete an earlier proof that in…
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…
Quantum cosmology uses a wave function to model the universe, but finding solutions for this poses a problem as it is difficult to define the boundary conditions or identify the correct path for a path integral. We begin the discussion by…
A complete model of the universe needs at least three parts: (1) a complete set of physical variables and dynamical laws for them, (2) the correct solution of the dynamical laws, and (3) the connection with conscious experience. In quantum…
We re-examine the Hartle-Hawking wave function from the point of view of a quantum theory which starts from the connection representation and allows for off-shell non-constancy of $\Lambda$ (as in unimodular theory), with a concomitant dual…
We elucidate the nature of the correction to the Hartle-Hawking wavefunction presented in hep-th/$0505104$ and hep-th/$0406107$. The correction comes from the quantum fluctuation of the metric that spontaneously breaks the classical…
We revisit the path-integral approach to the wave function of the Universe by utilizing Lefschetz thimble analyses and resurgence theory. The traditional Euclidean path-integral of gravity has the notorious ambiguity of the direction of…
In quantum cosmology, one often considers tunneling phenomena which may have occurred in the early universe. Processes requiring quantum penetration of a potential barrier include black hole pair creation and the decay of vacuum domain…
We identify a fundamental obstruction to any theory of the beginning of the universe, formulated as a semiclassical path integral. Hartle and Hawking's no boundary proposal and Vilenkin's tunneling proposal are examples of such theories.…
In recent work, we introduced Picard-Lefschetz theory as a tool for defining the Lorentzian path integral for quantum gravity in a systematic semiclassical expansion. This formulation avoids several pitfalls occurring in the Euclidean…
A complete model of the universe needs at least three parts: (1) a complete set of physical variables and dynamical laws for them, (2) the correct solution of the dynamical laws, and (3) the connection with conscious experience. In quantum…
The reduction algorithms for functional determinants of differential operators on spacetime manifolds of different topological types are presented, which were recently used for the calculation of the no-boundary wavefunction and the…
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…
We analyse the impact of various boundary conditions on the (minisuperspace) Lorentzian gravitational path integral. In particular we assess the implications for the Hartle-Hawking no-boundary wavefunction. It was shown recently that when…
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…
We compute tunneling in a quantum field theory in 1+1 dimensions for a field potential $U(\Phi)$ of the asymmetric double well type. The system is localized initially in the ``false vacuum''. We consider the case of a {\em compact space}…
The tunneling Hamiltonian has proven to be a useful method in many body physics to treat particle tunneling between different states represented as wavefunctions. Here we apply a generalization of the way we formed appropriate wave…
We discuss new possible tunneling processes in the presence of gravity. We formulate quantum tunneling using the Wheeler-deWitt canonical quantization and the WKB approximation. The distinctive feature of our formulation is that it…
In Vilenkin's tunneling wavefunction proposal our expanding universe is born via a tunneling through a barrier from nothing at the zero scale factor. We explore the viability of this proposal for the spatially closed FLRW model with a…
We consider the generalisation of quantum tunneling transitions in the WKB approximation to the time-independent functional Schr\"odinger and Wheeler-DeWitt equations. Following a Lorentzian approach, we compute the transition rates among…