Related papers: Eternal inflation and its implications
The hypothesis that the Universe underwent a period of exponential expansion at very early times has become the most popular theory of the early Universe. Not only does it solve some of the problems of standard big bang cosmology, but it…
The notion of inflation (past or present) in standard cosmological models is shown to be a consequence of a sufficiently high second law entropy production from the internal heating of the universal expansion. The longitudinal viscous…
We examine various entropic inflation scenarios, under the light of eternality. After describing the inflation realization and the normal condition for inflation to last at the background level, we investigate the conditions for eternal…
Understanding the behavior of the universe at large depends critically on insights about the smallest units of matter and their fundamental interactions. Inflationary cosmology is a highly successful framework for exploring these…
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.…
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…
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…
We consider the possibility of a past and future eternal universe, constructing geodesically complete inflating, loitering, and bouncing spacetimes. We identify the constraints energy conditions in General Relativity place on the building…
Eternal inflation predicts our observable universe lies within a bubble (or pocket universe) embedded in a volume of inflating space. The interior of the bubble undergoes inflation and standard cosmology, while the bubble walls expand…
We propose that the totality of dark matter in the universe might ascribe its origin to one of the key properties of cosmological inflation, that it may be eternal: regions that at the end of the primordial accelerated expansion of the…
We investigate how eternal inflation is affected by quantum gravity effects. We consider general features of quantum gravity, such as renormalizability, complementarity, minimal length, definition of observables, and weak gravity…
Modern physics has unlocked a number of mysteries regarding the early Universe, such as the baryogenesis, the unification of the strong and electroweak forces and the nucleosynthesis. However, understanding the very early Universe, close to…
We present a framework in which well-defined predictions are obtained in an eternally inflating multiverse, based on the principles of quantum mechanics. We show that the entire multiverse is described purely from the viewpoint of a single…
While there is no consensus about the history of time since the beginning, in this paper I will discuss some possibilities. We have a pretty clear picture of cosmic history from the electroweak phase transition through the time of…
Models of cosmic inflation posit an early phase of accelerated expansion of the universe, driven by the dynamics of one or more scalar fields in curved spacetime. Though detailed assumptions about fields and couplings vary across models,…
A generic prediction of inflation is that the thermalized region we inhabit is spatially infinite. Thus, it contains an infinite number of regions of the same size as our observable universe, which we shall denote as $\O$-regions. We argue…
I describe reasons to think we are living in an eternally inflating multiverse where the observable "constants" of nature vary from place to place. The major obstacle to making predictions in this context is that we must regulate the…
The usual theory of inflation breaks down in eternal inflation. We derive a dual description of eternal inflation in terms of a deformed Euclidean CFT located at the threshold of eternal inflation. The partition function gives the amplitude…
We consider the description of cosmological dynamics from the onset of inflation by a perfect fluid whose parameters must be consistent with the strength of the enhanced quantum loop effects that can arise during inflation. The source of…
Recent developments in cosmology suggest that much of the universe is in a state of explosive, accelerated expansion, called inflation. We live in a "bubble" where inflation has ended, and other bubbles with diverse properties are…