TY - JOUR
T1 - Observational implications of cosmological event horizons
AU - Kaloper, Nemanja
AU - Kleban, Matthew
AU - Sorbo, Lorenzo
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank A. Albrecht, T. Banks, W. Fischler, G. Holder, M. Kaplinghat, A. Linde, M. Sloth, L. Susskind, S. Thomas, and T. Tyson for useful discussions. The work of N.K. and L.S. was supported in part by the DOE Grant DE-FG03-91ER40674, in part by the NSF Grant PHY-0332258 and in part by a Research Innovation Award from the Research Corporation. The work of M.K. is supported by NSF grant PHY-0070928. M.K. thanks the UC Davis cosmology group for hospitality during this work.
PY - 2004/10/21
Y1 - 2004/10/21
N2 - In a universe dominated by a small cosmological constant or by eternal dark energy with equation of state ω <-1/3, observers are surrounded by event horizons. The horizons limit how much of the universe the observers can ever access. We argue that this implies a bound N∼60 on the number of e-folds of inflation that will ever be observable in our universe if the scale of the dark energy today is ∼(10 -3 eV) 4. This bound is independent of how long inflation lasted, or for how long we continue to observe the sky. The bound arises because the imprints of the inflationary perturbations thermalize during the late acceleration of the universe. They "inflate away" just like the initial inhomogeneities during ordinary inflation. Thus the current CMB data may be looking as far back in the history of the universe as will ever be possible, making our era a most opportune time to study cosmology.
AB - In a universe dominated by a small cosmological constant or by eternal dark energy with equation of state ω <-1/3, observers are surrounded by event horizons. The horizons limit how much of the universe the observers can ever access. We argue that this implies a bound N∼60 on the number of e-folds of inflation that will ever be observable in our universe if the scale of the dark energy today is ∼(10 -3 eV) 4. This bound is independent of how long inflation lasted, or for how long we continue to observe the sky. The bound arises because the imprints of the inflationary perturbations thermalize during the late acceleration of the universe. They "inflate away" just like the initial inhomogeneities during ordinary inflation. Thus the current CMB data may be looking as far back in the history of the universe as will ever be possible, making our era a most opportune time to study cosmology.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.physletb.2004.08.068
DO - 10.1016/j.physletb.2004.08.068
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:4644295552
SN - 0370-2693
VL - 600
SP - 7
EP - 14
JO - Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics
JF - Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics
IS - 1-2
ER -