English

Homogeneity and the causal boundary

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2019-12-03 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Theory History and Philosophy of Physics

Abstract

A Universe with finite age also has a finite causal scale χ§\chi_\S, so the metric can not be homogeneous for χ>χ§\chi>\chi_\S, as it is usually assumed. To account for this, we propose a new causal boundary condition, that can be fulfil by fixing the cosmological constant Λ\Lambda (a free parameter for gravity). The resulting Universe is inhomogeneous, with possible variation of cosmological parameters on scales χχ§\chi \simeq \chi_\S. The size of χ§\chi_\S depends on the details of inflation, but regardless of its size, the boundary condition forces Λ/8πG\Lambda/8\pi G to cancel the contribution of a constant vacuum energy ρvac\rho_{vac} to the measured ρΛΛ/8πG+ρvac\rho_\Lambda \equiv \Lambda/8\pi G + \rho_{vac}. To reproduce the observed ρΛ2ρm\rho_{\Lambda} \simeq 2 \rho_m today with χ§\chi_\S \rightarrow \infty we then need a universe filled with evolving dark energy (DE) with pressure pDE>ρDEp_{DE}> - \rho_{DE} and a fine tuned value of ρDE2ρm\rho_{DE} \simeq 2 \rho_m today. This seems very odd, but there is another solution to this puzzle. We can have a finite value of χ§3c/H0\chi_\S \simeq 3 c/H_0 without the need of DE. This scale corresponds to half the sky at z1z \sim 1 and 60deg at z1000z \sim 1000, which is consistent with the anomalous lack of correlations observed in the CMB.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1911.13199,
  title  = {Homogeneity and the causal boundary},
  author = {Enrique Gaztanaga},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1911.13199},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

10 pages, 2 figures, invited review at XXXIX Polish Astronomical Society Meeting. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1904.08218

R2 v1 2026-06-23T12:31:15.483Z