The Real No-Boundary Wave Function in Lorentzian Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

It is shown that the standard no-boundary wave function has a natural expression in terms of a Lorentzian path integral with its contour defined by Picard-Lefschetz theory. The wave function is real, satisfies the Wheeler-DeWitt equation and predicts an ensemble of asymptotically classical, inflationary universes with nearly-Gaussian fluctuations and with a smooth semiclassical origin.

1 + 10.5 + 2.5 pages, 2 figures. v2: minor changes and added references

References in corpus (3)

• The Classical Universes of the No-Boundary Quantum State
• The No-Boundary Measure of the Universe
• Real-time Feynman path integral with Picard--Lefschetz theory and its applications to quantum tunneling

Cited by in corpus (6)

• No Rescue for the No Boundary Proposal
• The No-Boundary Proposal as a Path Integral with Robin Boundary Conditions
• The no-boundary proposal in biaxial Bianchi IX minisuperspace
• Spinor driven cosmic bounces and their cosmological perturbations
• Gravitational Decoupling and Picard-Lefschetz
• Simulating 0+1 Dimensional Quantum Gravity on Quantum Computers: Mini-Superspace Quantum Cosmology and the World Line Approach in Quantum Field Theory