Observational consequences of a landscape

Ben Freivogel, Matthew Kleban, María Rodríguez Martínez, Leonard Susskind

    Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

    Abstract

    In this paper we consider the implications of the "landscape" paradigm [1], [2] for the large scale properties of the universe. The most direct implication of a rich landscape is that our local universe was born in a tunnelling event from a neighboring vacuum. This would imply that we live in an open FRW universe with negative spatial curvature. We argue that the "overshoot" problem, which in other settings would make it difficult to achieve slow roll inflation, actually favors such a cosmology. We consider anthropic bounds on the value of the curvature and on the parameters of inflation. When supplemented by statistical arguments these bounds suggest that the number of inflationary efolds is not very much larger than the observed lower bound. Although not statistically favored, the likelihood that the number of efolds is close to the bound set by observations is not negligible. The possible signatures of such a low number of efolds are briefly described.

    Original languageEnglish (US)
    Pages (from-to)1005-1023
    Number of pages19
    JournalJournal of High Energy Physics
    Issue number3
    DOIs
    StatePublished - Mar 1 2006

    Keywords

    • dS vacua in string theory

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Nuclear and High Energy Physics

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