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Register a new userIs there any coherent measure for eternal inflation?
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Ken D. Olum
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An eternally inflating universe produces an infinite amount of spatial volume, so every possible event happens an infinite number of times, and it is impossible to define probabilities in terms of frequencies. This problem is usually addressed by means of a measure, which regulates the infinities and produces meaningful predictions. I argue that any measure should obey certain general axioms, but then give a simple toy model in which one can prove that no measure obeying the axioms exists. In certain cases of eternal inflation there are measures that obey the axioms, but all such measures appear to be unacceptable for other reasons. Thus the problem of defining sensible probabilities in eternal inflation seems not be solved.
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Magnetic monopoles have been a subject of study for more than a century since the first ideas by A. Vaschy and P. Curie, circa 1890. In 1974, Y. Nambu proposed a model for magnetic monopoles exploring a parallelism between the broken symmetry Higgs and the superconductivity Ginzburg-Landau theories in order to describe the pions quark-antiquark confinement states. There, Nambu describes an energetic string where its end points behave like two magnetic monopoles with opposite magnetic charges -- quark and antiquark. Consequently, not only the interaction among monopole and antimonopole, mediated by a massive vector boson (Yukawa potential), but also the energetic string (linear potential) contributes to the effective interaction potential. We propose here a monopole-antimonopole non confining attractive interaction of the Nambu-type, and then investigate the formation of bound states, the monopolium. Some necessary conditions for the existence of bound states to be fulfilled by the proposed Nambu-type potential, Kato weakness, Set^o and Bargmann conditions, are verified. In the following, ground state energies are estimated for a variety of monopolium reduced mass, from $10^2$MeV to $10^2$TeV, and Compton interaction lengths, from $10^{-2}$am to $10^{-1}$pm, where discussion about non relativistic and relativistic limits validation is carried out.
In a situation like eternal inflation, where our data is replicated at infinitely-many other space-time events, it is necessary to make a prior assumption about our location to extract predictions. The principle of mediocrity entails that we live at asymptotic late times, when the occupational probabilities of vacua has settled to a near-equilibrium distribution. In this paper we further develop the idea that we instead exist during the approach to equilibrium, much earlier than the exponentially-long mixing time. In this case we are most likely to reside in vacua that are easily accessed dynamically. Using first-passage statistics, we prove that vacua that maximize their space-time volume at early times have: 1. maximal ever-hitting probability; 2. minimal mean first-passage time; and 3. minimal decay rate. These requirements are succinctly captured by an early-time measure. The idea that we live at early times is a predictive guiding principle, with many phenomenological implications. First, our vacuum should lie deep in a funneled region, akin to folding energy landscapes of proteins. Second, optimal landscape regions are characterized by relatively short-lived vacua, with lifetime of order the de Sitter Page time. For our vacuum, this lifetime is $sim 10^{130}$~years, which is consistent with the Standard Model estimate due to Higgs metastability. Third, the measure favors vacua with small, positive vacuum energy. This can address the cosmological constant problem, provided there are sufficiently many vacua in the entire ensemble of funnels. As a concrete example, we study the Bousso-Polchinski lattice of flux vacua, and find that the early-time measure favors lattices with the fewest number of flux dimensions. This favors compactifications with a large hierarchy between the lightest modulus and all other Kahler and complex structure moduli.
We model the essential features of eternal inflation on the landscape of a dense discretuum of vacua by the potential $V(phi)=V_{0}+delta V(phi)$, where $|delta V(phi)|ll V_{0}$ is random. We find that the diffusion of the distribution function $rho(phi,t)$ of the inflaton expectation value in different Hubble patches may be suppressed due to the effect analogous to the Anderson localization in disordered quantum systems. At $t to infty$ only the localized part of the distribution function $rho (phi, t)$ survives which leads to dynamical selection principle on the landscape. The probability to measure any but a small value of the cosmological constant in a given Hubble patch on the landscape is exponentially suppressed at $tto infty$.
We present an interpretation of the physics of space-times undergoing eternal inflation by repeated nucleation of bubbles. In many cases the physics can be interpreted in terms of the quantum mechanics of a system with a finite number of states. If this interpretation is correct, the conventional picture of these space-times is misleading.
We develop the path integral formalism for studying cosmological perturbations in multi-field inflation, which is particularly well suited to study quantum theories with gauge symmetries such as diffeomorphism invariance. We formulate the gauge fixing conditions based on the Poisson brackets of the constraints, from which we derive two convenient gauges that are appropriate for multi-field inflation. We then adopt the in-in formalism to derive the most general expression for the power spectrum of the curvature perturbation including the corrections from the interactions of the curvature mode with other light degrees of freedom. We also discuss the contributions of the interactions to the bispectrum.
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