Reconciling inflation with openness

Abstract

It is already understood that the increasing observational evidence for an open Universe can be reconciled with inflation if our horizon is contained inside one single huge bubble nucleated during the inflationary phase transition. In this frame of ideas, we show here that the probability of living in a bubble with the right ${\Omega }_0$ (now the observations require ${\Omega }_0\approx .2$) can be comparable with unity, rather than infinitesimally small. For this purpose we modify both quantitatively and qualitatively an intuitive toy model based upon fourth order gravity. As this scheme can be implemented in canonical General Relativity as well (although then the inflation driving potential must be designed entirely ad hoc), inferring from the observations that ${\Omega }_0<1$ not only does not conflict with the inflationary paradigm, but rather supports therein the occurrence of a primordial phase transition.

4 pages, one postscript figure, to be published on Physical Review D PACS: 98.80. Cq

References in corpus (1)

• Double Field Inflation

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Interactions in Scalar Field Cosmology
• Quantum Creation of an Open Inflationary Universe
• The false vacuum bubble nucleation due to a nonminimally coupled scalar field
• The vacuum bubbles in de Sitter background and black hole pair creation
• Metric Perturbations from Quantum Tunneling in Open Inflation
• Wall fluctuation modes and tensor CMB anisotropy in open inflation models
• Gauss-Bonnet Term on Vacuum Decay
• Reconstruction of the bubble nucleating potential
• Quantized gravitational waves in the Milne universe
• Open Inflationary Universes in the Induced Gravity Theory
• Probability of Slowroll Inflation in the Multiverse
• Open Universes from Finite Radius Bubbles