Related papers: Boundary Conditions in Quantum String Cosmology
We review physical motivations, phenomenological consequences, and open problems of the so-called pre-big bang scenario in superstring cosmology.
There is a common expectation that the big-bang singularity must be resolved in quantum gravity but it is not clear how this can be achieved. A major obstacle here is the difficulty of interpreting wave-functions in quantum gravity. The…
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…
A review is attempted of physical motivations, theoretical and phenomenological aspects, as well as outstanding problems, of the pre-big bang scenario in string cosmology.
A framework associating quantum cosmological boundary conditions to minisuperspace hidden symmetries has been introduced in \cite{7}. The scope of the application was, notwithstanding the novelty, restrictive because it lacked a discussion…
String cosmology aims at providing a reliable description of the very early Universe in the regime where standard-model physics is no longer appropriate, and where we can safely apply the basic ingredients of superstring models such as…
On the path towards quantum gravity, we find friction between temporal relations in quantum mechanics (QM) (where they are fixed and field-independent), and in general relativity (where they are field-dependent and dynamic). This paper aims…
In a universe whose elementary constituents are point particles there does not seem to be any obvious mechanism for avoiding the initial singularities in physical quantities in the standard model of cosmology. In contrast in string theory…
Enforcing the spacetime of supermassive cosmic strings to satisfy the symmetry of a gravitational topological defect, that is a spacetime kink, it is shown that the energy of these strings becomes quantized so that only defects whose…
Cosmic strings are predicted in many models beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. In models which admit strings, a network of strings will inevitably be formed in a phase transition in the early universe and will persist to the…
This paper examines two cosmological models of quantum gravity (from string theory and loop quantum gravity) to investigate the foundational and conceptual issues arising from quantum treatments of the big bang. While the classical…
This paper presents a review of the basic, model-independent differences between the pre-big bang scenario, arising naturally in a string cosmology context, and the standard inflationary scenario. We use an unconventional approach in which…
We calculate the density and gravitational wave spectrums generated in a version of string cosmology termed pre-big bang scenario. The large scale structures are originated from quantum fluctuations of the metric and dilaton field during a…
Cosmic strings are linear concentrations of energy that form whenever phase transitions in the early universe break axial symmetries as originally shown by Kibble. They are the result of frustrated order in the quantum fields responsible…
String theory can (in principle) describe gravity at all curvature scales, and can be applied to cosmology to look back in time beyond the Planck epoch. The duality symmetries of string theory suggest a cosmological picture in which the…
It is argued that classical string solutions should not be fine tuned to have a positive cosmological constant (CC) at the observed size, since even the quantum corrections from standard model effects will completely negate any classical…
A reformulation of a physical theory in which measurements at the initial and final moments of time are treated independently is discussed, both on the classical and quantum levels. Methods of the standard quantum mechanics are used to…
If the block universe view is correct, the future and the past have similar status and one would expect physical theories to involve final as well as initial boundary conditions. A plausible consistency condition between the initial and…
The path integral approach to quantum mechanics requires a substantial generalisation to describe the dynamics of systems confined to bounded domains. Non-local boundary conditions can be introduced in Feynman's approach by means of…
Within two specific string cosmology scenarios --differing in the way the pre- and post-big bang phases are joined-- we compute the size and spectral slope of various types of cosmologically amplified quantum fluctuations that arise in…