Measures on transitions for cosmology from eternal inflation

Abstract

We argue that in the context of eternal inflation in the landscape, making predictions for cosmological -- and possibly particle physics -- observables requires a measure on the possible cosmological histories as opposed to one on the vacua themselves. If significant slow-roll inflation occurs, the observables are generally determined by the history after the last transition between metastable vacua. Hence we start from several existing measures for counting vacua and develop measures for counting the transitions between vacua.

4 pages, 1 figures, accepted to PRL; minor changes to match published version

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Cited by in corpus (23)

• Boltzmann brains and the scale-factor cutoff measure of the multiverse
• Predicting the cosmological constant with the scale-factor cutoff measure
• Towards observable signatures of other bubble universes
• Towards a gauge invariant volume-weighted probability measure for eternal inflation
• Towards observable signatures of other bubble universes II: Exact solutions for thin-wall bubble collisions
• Stationary Measure in the Multiverse
• Cosmic Perturbations Through the Cyclic Ages
• The Born Rule Dies
• Cycles in the Multiverse
• How unitary cosmology generalizes thermodynamics and solves the inflationary entropy problem
• Eternal Hilltop Inflation
• Cosmological Measures without Volume Weighting
• Field dynamics and tunneling in a flux landscape
• Eternal Inflation, past and future
• The distribution of Omega_k from the scale-factor cutoff measure
• A Finite Measure for the Initial Conditions of Inflation
• Reheating-volume measure in the landscape
• Measures for a Transdimensional Multiverse
• Agnesi Weighting for the Measure Problem of Cosmology
• Initial Conditions of Inflation in a Bianchi I Universe
• Dynamical systems of eternal inflation: A possible solution to the problems of entropy, measure, observables and initial conditions
• Path Integral for Stochastic Inflation: Non-Perturbative Volume Weighting, Complex Histories, Initial Conditions and the End of Inflation
• The Continuum of Discrete Trajectories in Eternal Inflation