Open inflation from non-singular instantons: Wrapping the universe with a membrane

Abstract

The four-form field recently considered by Hawking and Turok couples naturally to a charged membrane, across which the effective cosmological constant has a discontinuity. We present instantons for the creation of an open inflationary universe surrounded by a membrane. They can also be used to describe the nucleation of a membrane on a pre-existing inflationary background. This process typically decreases the value of the effective cosmological constant and may lead to a novel scenario of eternal inflation. Moreover, by coupling the inflaton field to the membrane, the troublesome singularities which arise in the Hawking-Turok model can be eliminated.

23 pages, LaTeX2e, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (15)

• Quantization of Four-form Fluxes and Dynamical Neutralization of the Cosmological Constant
• Saltatory Relaxation of the Cosmological Constant
• General N = 1 Supersymmetric Fluxes in Massive Type IIA String Theory
• Instanton Cosmology and Domain Walls from M-theory and String Theory
• Susskind's Challenge to the Hartle-Hawking No-Boundary Proposal and Possible Resolutions
• Graceful exit from a stringy landscape via MSSM inflation
• The vacuum bubbles in de Sitter background and black hole pair creation
• Dynamics of M-theory vacua
• Bubbles from Nothing
• The Initial State of a Primordial Anisotropic Stage of Inflation
• Power-law Inflation Satisfies Penrose's Weyl Curvature Hypothesis
• Eternally accelerating spacelike braneworld cosmologies
• Morse-Bott inequalities, Topology Change and Cobordisms to Nothing
• Action of Singular Instantons of Hawking-Turok Type
• Kaluza-Klein bubble like structure and celestial sphere in inflationary universe