Observing the Multiverse with Cosmic Wakes

Abstract

Current theories of the origin of the Universe, including string theory, predict the existence of a multiverse containing many bubble universes. These bubble universes will generically collide, and collisions with ours produce cosmic wakes that enter our Hubble volume, appear as unusually symmetric disks in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and disturb large scale structure (LSS). There is preliminary observational evidence consistent with one or more of these disturbances on our sky. However, other sources can produce similar features in the CMB temperature map and so additional signals are needed to verify their extra-universal origin. Here we find, for the first time, the detailed three-dimensional shape and CMB temperature and polarization signals of the cosmic wake of a bubble collision in the early universe consistent with current observations. The predicted polarization pattern has distinctive features that when correlated with the corresponding temperature pattern are a unique and striking signal of a bubble collision. These features represent the first verifiable prediction of the multiverse paradigm and might be detected by current experiments such as Planck and future CMB polarization missions. A detection of a bubble collision would confirm the existence of the Multiverse, provide compelling evidence for the string theory landscape, and sharpen our picture of the Universe and its origins.

17 pages, 7 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (12)

• Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation
• The Primordial Inflation Explorer (PIXIE): A Nulling Polarimeter for Cosmic Microwave Background Observations
• CMBPol Mission Concept Study: Probing Inflation with CMB Polarization
• ACTPol: A polarization-sensitive receiver for the Atacama Cosmology Telescope
• Eternal inflation, bubble collisions, and the persistence of memory
• First Observational Tests of Eternal Inflation
• First Observational Tests of Eternal Inflation: Analysis Methods and WMAP 7-Year Results
• Cosmic Bubble Collisions
• Eternal Inflation, Bubble Collisions, and the Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory
• Analyzing Cosmic Bubble Collisions
• Constraints on standard and non-standard early Universe models from CMB B-mode polarization
• The Polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background

Cited by in corpus (18)

• The cosmological Higgstory of the vacuum instability
• Schwinger effect in de Sitter space
• Cosmic bubble and domain wall instabilities III: The role of oscillons in three-dimensional bubble collisions
• The Cosmological Constant Problem, Dark Energy, and the Landscape of String Theory
• Simulating the universe(s): from cosmic bubble collisions to cosmological observables with numerical relativity
• Analyzing Cosmic Bubble Collisions
• The Multiverse and Particle Physics
• Large-scale anomalies from primordial dissipation
• Simulating the universe(s) II: phenomenology of cosmic bubble collisions in full General Relativity
• Hierarchical Bayesian Detection Algorithm for Early-Universe Relics in the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Les Houches lectures on inflationary observables and string theory
• Barnacles -- A Novel Channel for Vacuum Decay
• Optimal analysis of azimuthal features in the CMB
• Observable Signatures of a Classical Transition
• Detecting candidate cosmic bubble collisions with optimal filters
• Forecasting constraints from the cosmic microwave background on eternal inflation
• Multiverse effects on the CMB angular correlation function in the framework of NCG
• Testing eternal inflation with the kinetic Sunyaev Zel'dovich effect