Related papers: Dynamics of M-theory vacua
A wide variety of vacua, and their cosmological realization, may provide an explanation for the apparently anthropic choices of some parameters of particle physics and cosmology. If the probability on various parameters is weighted by…
A brief review of the modern state of quantum cosmology is presented as a theory of quantum initial conditions for inflationary scenario. The no-boundary and tunneling states of the Universe are discussed as a possible source of probability…
Inflation has been the leading early universe scenario for two decades, and has become an accepted element of the successful `cosmic concordance' model. However, there are many puzzling features of the resulting theory. It requires both…
If a theory has more than one classically stable vacuum, quantum tunneling and thermal jumps make the transition between the vacua possible. The transition happens through a first order phase transition started by nucleation of a bubble of…
After reviewing the cosmological constant problem - why is Lambda not huge? - I outline the two basic approaches that had emerged by the late 1980s, and note that each made a clear prediction. Precision cosmological experiments now indicate…
The theory of cosmological fluctuations assumes that the pre-inflationary state of the universe was the quantum vacuum of a scalar field(s) coupled to gravity. The observed cosmic microwave background fluctuations are then interpreted as…
In the context of inflation, non-vacuum initial states for cosmological perturbations that possess a built in scale are studied. It is demonstrated that this assumption leads to a falsifiable class of models. The question of whether they…
Many quantum condensed-matter systems, and probably the quantum vacuum of our Universe, are strongly correlated and strongly interacting fermionic systems, which cannot be treated perturbatively. However, physics which emerges in the…
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…
The universe might experience many cycles with different vacua. The slow-roll inflation may be preceded by kinetic-dominated contraction occurring in "adjacent" vacua during some cycles. In this report we briefly show this phenomenon may…
The evolution of a scalar field is explored taking into account the presence of a background fluid in a positively curved Universe in the framework of loop quantum cosmology. Though the mechanism that provides the initial conditions for…
In the framework of Inflationary theory, the assumption that the quantum state of the perturbations is a non-vacuum state leads to a difficulty: non-vacuum initial states imply, in general, a large energy density of inflaton field quanta,…
It is argued that the world is a dissipative dynamic system, a phase flow of which is formed by conformally-symplectic mapping. The key assumption is that the concept of energy in microcosm makes sense only for the steady motions…
We investigate if the observed small and nearly scale-invariant primordial cosmic perturbation, i.e. the perturbation amplitude $P_\zeta\sim10^{-9}$ and the spectral index $n_s \simeq 0.965$, is typical in the landscape of vacua after…
An earlier paper points out that a quantum treatment of the string landscape is necessary. It suggests that the wavefunction of the universe is mobile in the landscape until the universe reaches a meta-stable site with its cosmological…
Perhaps the deepest mystery of our accelerating Universe in expansion is the existence of a tiny and rigid cosmological constant, $\Lambda$. Its size is many orders of magnitude below the expected one in the standard model of particle…
Detailed measurements of the cosmic microwave background indicate the large-scale homogeneity of the universe. On very small scales, we observe however inhomogeneities such as galaxies, stars, planets and ourselves. In the context of hot…
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…
Recently, the notion that the number of vacua is enormous has received increased attentions, which may be regarded as a possible anthropical explanation to incredible small cosmological constant. Further, a dynamical mechanisms to implement…
There exist a one complex parameter family of de Sitter invariant vacua, known as alpha vacua. In the context of slow roll inflation, we show that all but the Bunch-Davies vacuum generates unacceptable production of high energy particles at…