Black holes and the multiverse

Journal Article · Mon Feb 01 04:00:00 EST 2016 · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2016/02/064· OSTI ID:22524974

Garriga, Jaume ^[1]; Vilenkin, Alexander; Zhang, Jun ^[2]

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1. Departament de Fisica Fonamental i Institut de Ciencies del Cosmos, Universitat de Barcelona, Marti i Franques, 1, Barcelona, 08028 Spain (Spain)
2. Institute of Cosmology, Tufts University, 574 Boston Ave, Medford, MA, 02155 (United States)

Vacuum bubbles may nucleate and expand during the inflationary epoch in the early universe. After inflation ends, the bubbles quickly dissipate their kinetic energy; they come to rest with respect to the Hubble flow and eventually form black holes. The fate of the bubble itself depends on the resulting black hole mass. If the mass is smaller than a certain critical value, the bubble collapses to a singularity. Otherwise, the bubble interior inflates, forming a baby universe, which is connected to the exterior FRW region by a wormhole. A similar black hole formation mechanism operates for spherical domain walls nucleating during inflation. As an illustrative example, we studied the black hole mass spectrum in the domain wall scenario, assuming that domain walls interact with matter only gravitationally. Our results indicate that, depending on the model parameters, black holes produced in this scenario can have significant astrophysical effects and can even serve as dark matter or as seeds for supermassive black holes. The mechanism of black hole formation described in this paper is very generic and has important implications for the global structure of the universe. Baby universes inside super-critical black holes inflate eternally and nucleate bubbles of all vacua allowed by the underlying particle physics. The resulting multiverse has a very non-trivial spacetime structure, with a multitude of eternally inflating regions connected by wormholes. If a black hole population with the predicted mass spectrum is discovered, it could be regarded as evidence for inflation and for the existence of a multiverse.

• OSTI ID: 22524974
• Journal Information: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Journal Issue: 02 Vol. 2016; ISSN 1475-7516
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
ASTROPHYSICS
BLACK HOLES
BUBBLES
COSMOLOGICAL INFLATION
INFLATIONARY UNIVERSE
KINETIC ENERGY
MASS SPECTRA
NONLUMINOUS MATTER
SINGULARITY
SPACE-TIME
UNIVERSE