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Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 201301 (2008) [4 pages]

No-Boundary Measure of the Universe

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James B. Hartle1, S. W. Hawking2, and Thomas Hertog3
1Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, 93106, USA
2DAMTP, CMS, Wilberforce Road, CB3 0WA Cambridge, United Kingdom
3Laboratoire APC, Université Paris 7, 10 rue A.Domon et L.Duquet, 75205 Paris, France and International Solvay Institutes, Boulevard du Triomphe, ULB-C.P. 231, 1050 Brussels, Belgium

Received 8 February 2008; published 23 May 2008

We consider the no-boundary proposal for homogeneous isotropic closed universes with a cosmological constant and a scalar field with a quadratic potential. In the semiclassical limit, it predicts classical behavior at late times if the scalar field is large enough. The classical histories may be singular in the past or bounce at a finite radius. This probability measure selects inflationary histories but is biased towards small numbers of e-foldings N. However, to obtain the probability of our observations in our past light cone these probabilities should be multiplied by exp⁡(3N). This volume weighting is similar to that in eternal inflation. In a landscape potential, it would predict that the Universe underwent a large amount of inflation and could have always been semiclassical.

© 2008 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.201301
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.201301
PACS:
98.80.Qc, 04.60.−m, 98.80.Bp, 98.80.Cq