The Arrow Of Time In The Landscape
arXiv:0711.1656
Abstract
We argue that an understanding of the Arrow of Time is urgently required if recent string-theoretic ideas about cosmology are to be made to function. In the string Landscape, the nucleation of baby universes is postulated to "populate" the multiverse. Here we argue that baby universes can only have an Arrow if they \emph{inherit} one; the problem of explaining the Arrow is thus reduced to explaining it in the case of the original universe. Motivated by the Ooguri-Vafa-Verlinde formulation of "creation from nothing" in the context of string theory, we propose that the original universe was created along a spacelike surface with the topology of a torus. Using deep results in global differential geometry, we are able to show that the geometry of this surface had to be non-generic. This geometric "specialness" is communicated to matter through the inflaton. Thus we have a theory of the Arrow which is intrinsically geometric, which incorporates Inflation, and which allows universes in the Landscape to begin with physically acceptable initial conditions.
To appear in R. Vaas (ed.): Beyond the Big Bang. Springer: Heidelberg 2008
References in corpus (26)
- The Anthropic Landscape of String Theory
- The Mathematical Universe
- Observational Consequences of a Landscape
- The Cosmological Constant and the String Landscape
- Hartle-Hawking Wave-Function for Flux Compactifications
- Towards observable signatures of other bubble universes
- Spontaneous Inflation and the Origin of the Arrow of Time
- Eternal inflation, bubble collisions, and the persistence of memory
- Two Tunnels to Inflation
- Searching for Inflation in Simple String Theory Models: An Astrophysical Perspective
- Is Our Universe Decaying at an Astronomical Rate?
- Rapid Tunneling and Percolation in the Landscape
- Why the Universe Started from a Low Entropy State
- A New View of the Cosmic Landscape
- The Landscape "avant la lettre"
- Is the accelerated expansion evidence of a forthcoming change of signature on the brane?
- Conceptual Problems of Inflationary Cosmology and a New Approach to Cosmological Structure Formation
- Arrow of Time in String Theory
- The Census Taker's Hat
- The Geometry of Large Causal Diamonds and the No Hair Property of Asymptotically de-Sitter Spacetimes
- Anthropics and Myopics: Conditional Probabilities and the Cosmological Constant
- Time before Time - Classifications of universes in contemporary cosmology, and how to avoid the antinomy of the beginning and eternity of the world
- Initial Conditions for Bubble Universes
- On Constructing Baby Universes and Black Holes
- General asymptotic solutions of the Einstein equations and phase transitions in quantum gravity
- Black hole thermodynamics