Related papers: Boundary Conditions and Predictions of Quantum Cos…
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…
What is the quantum state of the universe? That is the central question of quantum cosmology. This essay describes the place of that quantum state in a final theory governing the regularities exhibited universally by all physical systems in…
When the universe is treated as a quantum system, it is described by a wave function. This wave function is a function not only of the matter fields, but also of spacetime. The no-boundary proposal is the idea that the wave function should…
We contrast the initial condition requirements of various contemporary cosmological models, including inflationary and bouncing cosmologies. Various proposals such as Hartle-Hawking's no boundary, or Tunnelling boundary conditions are…
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…
For many years, the most active area of quantum cosmology has been the issue of choosing boundary conditions for the wave function of a universe. Recently, loop quantum cosmology, which is obtained from loop quantum gravity, has shed new…
Quantum cosmology is the quantum theory of the entire universe. Although strange at first sight, it is appropriate because (1) our world appears to be fundamentally quantum, (2) the classical description of gravity breaks down at…
We specify the semiclassical no-boundary wave function of the universe without relying on a functional integral of any kind. The wave function is given as a sum of specific saddle points of the dynamical theory that satisfy conditions of…
An alternative formulation of the no-boundary initial state of the universe in the Euclidean quantum theory of gravity is proposed. Unlike the no-boundary Hartle-Hawking wave function, in which time appears together with macroscopic…
Proposing smooth initial conditions is one of the most important tasks in quantum cosmology. On the other hand, the low-energy effective action, appearing in the semiclassical path integral, can get nontrivial quantum corrections near…
A discrete class of privileged reference frames in a closed universe with identical equations of motion for physical degrees of freedom was found. A representation of the quantum state of the universe in a privileged reference frame was…
In quantum cosmological models, constructed in the framework of Friedmann-Robertson-Walker metrics, a nucleation of the Universe with its further expansion is described as a tunneling transition through an effective barrier between regions…
In physical theories, boundary or initial conditions play the role of selecting special situations which can be described by a theory with its general laws. Cosmology has long been suspected to be different in that its fundamental theory…
Different proposals for the wave function of the universe are analyzed, with an emphasis on various forms of the tunneling proposal. The issues discussed include the equivalence of the Lorentzian path integral and outgoing-wave proposals,…
Intuitively, the totality of physical reality -- the Cosmos -- has a beginning only if (i) all parts of the Cosmos agree on the direction of time (the Direction Condition) and (ii) there is a boundary to the past of all non-initial…
The basic problem of quantum cosmology is the definition of the quantum state of the universe, with appropriate boundary conditions on Riemannian three-geometries. This paper describes recent progress in the corresponding analysis of…
We review the canonical quantisation of the geometry of the spacetime in the cases of a simply and a non-simply connected manifold. In the former, we analyse the information contained in the solutions of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation and…
Realising the no-boundary proposal of Hartle and Hawking as a consistent gravitational path integral has been a long-standing puzzle. In particular, it was demonstrated by Feldbrugge et al. that the sum over all universes starting from zero…
In this paper it is studied the cosmology of a homogeneous and isotropic spacetime endorsed with a conformally coupled massless scalar field. We find six different solutions of the Friedmann equation that represent six different types of…
We propose a formulation of quantum mechanics in three dimensions with spherical symmetry for a finite level system whose dynamics is not governed by a differential equation of motion. The wavefunction is written as an infinite sum in a…