Fractal-Flows and Time's Arrow

Abstract

This is the written version of a lecture at the KITP workshop on Bits, Branes, and Black Holes. In it I describe work with D. Harlow, S. Shenker, D. Stanford which explains how the tree-like structure of eternal inflation, together with the existence of terminal vacua, leads to an arrow-of-time. Conformal symmetry of the dS/CFT type is inconsistent with an arrow-of-time and must be broken. The presence in the landscape of terminal vacua leads to a new kind of attractor called a fractal-flow, which both breaks conformal symmetry, and creates a directional time-asymmetry. This can be seen from both the local or causal-patch viewpoint, and also from the global or multiversal viewpoint. The resulting picture is consistent with the view recently expressed by Bousso. In the last part of the lecture I illustrate how the tree-model can be useful in explaining the value of the cosmological constant and the cosmic coincidence problem. The mechanisms are not new but the description is.

24 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (10)

• de Sitter Vacua in String Theory
• The Anthropic Landscape of String Theory
• The Trouble with de Sitter Space
• Eternal Inflation: The Inside Story
• Eternal Symmetree
• Complementarity in the Multiverse
• Global-Local Duality in Eternal Inflation
• Geometric origin of coincidences and hierarchies in the landscape
• Vacuum Structure and the Arrow of Time
• The Three Faces of a Fixed Point

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Life at the Interface of Particle Physics and String Theory
• Asymptotic Observables and the Swampland
• The Top 10^{500} Reasons Not to Believe in the Landscape
• Computational Complexity and Black Hole Horizons
• Was There a Beginning?
• Is Eternal Inflation Past-Eternal? And What if It Is?
• New Local Duals in Eternal Inflation
• Multifractals, Mumford curves, and Eternal Inflation