Initial conditions for R+epsilonR/sup 2/ cosmology

Journal Article · Wed Mar 15 04:00:00 EST 1989 · Phys. Rev. D; (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.39.1496· OSTI ID:6192086

Mijic, M B; Morris, M S; Suen, W M

A pure gravity cosmology based on the R+epsilonR/sup 2/ Lagrangian is known to exhibit inflation for a wide range of initial conditions. In this paper we use the wave function from quantum cosmology to describe this inflation as a chaotic inflationary phase immediately following the quantum creation of the Universe. We evaluate, compare, and discuss the distributions over initial conditions that are fixed by the two boundary-condition proposals of Hartle and Hawking (''no boundary'') and Vilenkin (''tunneling from nothing''). We find that among all classical inflationary trajectories that begin on the classical-quantum boundary, those that lead to an inflation of at least 70 e-foldings make up a fraction of /similar to/exp(-10/sup 12/) in the former case and /similar to/1-exp(-8 x 10/sup 10/) in the latter. Thus, in the simplest interpretation, the observable Universe would be the outcome of a rare event for the first boundary-condition proposal and a typical event for the second.

• Research Organization: Physics Department, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6T/vert bar/2A6 and Theoretical Physics Laboratory, The Boris Kidric Institute of Nuclear Sciences, Belgrade, Yugoslavia
• OSTI ID: 6192086
• Journal Information: Phys. Rev. D; (United States), Journal Name: Phys. Rev. D; (United States) Vol. 39:6; ISSN PRVDA
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

640106* -- Astrophysics & Cosmology-- Cosmology
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
BOUNDARY CONDITIONS
COMPOSITE MODELS
COSMOLOGICAL MODELS
EXTENDED PARTICLE MODEL
FIELD THEORIES
FUNCTIONS
GENERAL RELATIVITY THEORY
GRAVITATIONAL FIELDS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
PARTICLE MODELS
QUANTUM FIELD THEORY
QUANTUM GRAVITY
QUARK MODEL
RENORMALIZATION
SCALAR FIELDS
SEMICLASSICAL APPROXIMATION
STRING MODELS
SUPERSYMMETRY
SYMMETRY
UNIVERSE
WAVE FUNCTIONS