Universality of the volume bound in slow-roll eternal inflation

Sergei Dubovsky, Leonardo Senatore, Giovanni Villadoro

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    It has recently been shown that in single field slow-roll inflation the total volume cannot grow by a factor larger than eSdS/2 without becoming infinite. The bound is saturated exactly at the phase transition to eternal inflation where the probability to produce infinite volume becomes non zero. We show that the bound holds sharply also in any space-time dimensions, when arbitrary higher-dimensional operators are included and in the multi-field inflationary case. The relation with the entropy of de Sitter and the universality of the bound strengthen the case for a deeper holographic interpretation. As a spin-off we provide the formalism to compute the probability distribution of the volume after inflation for generic multi-field models, which might help to address questions about the population of vacua of the landscape during slow-roll inflation.

    Original languageEnglish (US)
    Article number35
    JournalJournal of High Energy Physics
    Volume2012
    Issue number5
    DOIs
    StatePublished - May 2012

    Keywords

    • Cosmology of theories beyond the SM
    • Models of quantum gravity
    • Space-time symmetries
    • Stochastic processes

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Nuclear and High Energy Physics

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Universality of the volume bound in slow-roll eternal inflation'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this