Related papers: Regulating Eternal Inflation
Eternal inflation is a seemingly generic consequence of theories that give rise to accelerated expansion of the universe and possess multiple vacuum states. Making predictions in an eternally inflating universe is notoriously difficult…
Eternal inflation requires upward fluctuations of the energy in a Hubble volume, which appear to violate the energy conditions. In particular, a scalar field in an inflating spacetime should obey the averaged null energy condition, which…
I summarize the arguments that strongly suggest that our universe is the product of inflation. The mechanisms that lead to eternal inflation in both new and chaotic models are described. Although the infinity of pocket universes produced by…
The basic workings of inflationary models are summarized, along with the arguments that strongly suggest that our universe is the product of inflation. I describe the quantum origin of density perturbations, giving a heuristic derivation of…
Inflation is known to be generically eternal to the future: the false vacuum is thermalized in some regions of space, while inflation continues in other regions. Here, we address the question of whether inflation can also be eternal to the…
The basic workings of inflationary models are summarized, along with the arguments that strongly suggest that our universe is the product of inflation. The mechanisms that lead to eternal inflation in both new and chaotic models are…
Cosmological inflation, if it occurred, radically alters the picture of the `big bang', which would merely point to reheating at the end of inflation. Moreover, this reheating may be only local, so that inflation continues elsewhere and…
In this paper we explore the relationship between the existence of eternal inflation and the initial conditions leading to inflation. We demonstrate that past and future completion of inflation is related, in that past-incomplete inflation…
The basic workings of inflationary models are summarized, along with the arguments that strongly suggest that our universe is the product of inflation. The mechanisms that lead to eternal inflation in both new and chaotic models are…
Motivated by the lessons of black hole complementarity, we develop a causal patch description of eternal inflation. We argue that an observer cannot ascribe a semiclassical geometry to regions outside his horizon, because the large-scale…
We discuss the large-scale structure of the universe in inflationary cosmology and the implications that it may have for the long-term future of civilizations. Although each civilization is doomed to perish, it may be possible to transmit…
Eternal inflation, the idea that there is always a part of the universe that is expanding exponentially, is a frequent feature of inflationary models. It has been argued that eternal inflation requires the violation of energy conditions,…
We review the paradigm of eternal inflation in the light of the recently proposed corpuscular picture of space-time. Comparing the strength of the average fluctuation of the field up its potential with that of quantum depletion, we show…
Informed by a quantum information perspective, we interpret cosmological expansion of space as growing entanglement between underlying degrees of freedom. In particular, we focus on inflationary cosmology, which, while being a successful…
In some well-known scenarios of open-universe eternal inflation, developed by Vilenkin and co-workers, a large number of universes nucleate and thermalize within the eternally inflating mega-universe. According to the proposal, each…
The basic workings of inflationary models are summarized, along with the arguments that strongly suggest that our universe is the product of inflation. It is argued that essentially all inflationary models lead to (future-)eternal…
A ``bubble universe'' nucleating in an eternally inflating false vacuum will experience, in the course of its expansion, collisions with an infinite number of other bubbles. In an idealized model, we calculate the rate of collisions around…
Since the advent of inflation, several theorems have been proven suggesting that although inflation can (and generically does) continue eternally into the future, it cannot be extended eternally into the past to create a ``steady-state''…
This review article aims at presenting the theory of inflation. We first describe the background spacetime behavior during the slow-roll phase and analyze how inflation ends and the Universe reheats. Then, we present the theory of…
Inflation is a bold and expansive extension of the Standard Cosmology. It holds the promise to extend our understanding of the Universe to within 10^{-32}sec of the big bang and answer most of the pressing questions in cosmology. Its…