Predicting a Prior for Planck

Abstract

The quantum state of the universe combined with the structure of the landscape potential implies a prior that specifies predictions for observations. We compute the prior for CMB related observables given by the no-boundary wave function (NBWF) in a landscape model that includes a range of inflationary patches representative of relatively simple single-field models. In this landscape the NBWF predicts our classical cosmological background emerges from a region of eternal inflation associated with a plateau-like potential. The spectra of primordial fluctuations on observable scales are characteristic of concave potentials, in excellent agreement with the Planck data. By contrast, alternative theories of initial conditions that strongly favor inflation at high values of the potential are disfavored by observations in this landscape.

18 pages, 5 figures; v2: minor corrections/clarifications; v3: published version, more explanation on top-down probability distribution over backgrounds

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• Quantum Cosmology and the Evolution of Inflationary Spectra
• Novel higher-curvature variations of $R^2$ inflation
• Islands in Multiverse Models
• Quantum Gravity and the Large Scale Anomaly
• The Kontsevich-Segal Criterion in the No-Boundary State Constrains Inflation
• Primordial fluctuations from complex AdS saddle points
• How strange is pion electroproduction?
• Many-field Inflation: Universality or Prior Dependence?
• Why concave rather than convex inflaton potential?
• Cosmic eggs to relax the cosmological constant
• Holographic Tunneling Wave Function
• Sharp Predictions from Eternal Inflation Patches in D-brane Inflation
• A correspondence between strings in the Hagedorn phase and asymptotically de Sitter space