Monday, June 17, 2013

1306.3232 (Anthony Aguirre et al.)

Quantum Instability of the Emergent Universe    [PDF]

Anthony Aguirre, John Kehayias
We perform a semi-classical analysis of the Emergent Universe scenario for inflation. Fixing the background, and taking the inflaton to be homogenous, we cast the inflaton's evolution as a one-dimensional quantum mechanics problem. We find that the tuning required over a long time scale for this inflationary scenario is unstable quantum mechanically. Considering the inflaton field value as a wavepacket, the spreading of the wavepacket destroys any chance of both starting and ending with a well-formed state. Thus, one cannot have an Einstein static universe to begin with that evolves into a well-defined beginning to inflation a long time later.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.3232

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