Eternal inflation without metaphysics
Year: 2010
Type: preprint
Abstract: We consider landscape models that admit several regions where the conditions for eternal inflation hold. It is shown that one can use the no-boundary wave function to calculate small departures from homogeneity within our past light cone despite the possibility of much larger fluctuations on super horizon scales. The dominant contribution comes from the history exiting eternal inflation at the lowest value of the potential. In a class of landscape models this predicts a tensor to scalar ratio of about 10%. In this way the no-boundary wave function defines a measure for the prediction of local cosmological observations.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: James B. Hartle, S. W. Hawking, Thomas Hertog
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2138442702