Periodic orbits in cosmological billiards: the Selberg trace formula for asymptotic Bianchi IX universes, evidence for scars in the wavefunction of the quantum universe and large-scale structure anisotropies of the present universe

TL;DR

This paper develops a spectral and trace formula approach for cosmological billiards in 4D spacetime, linking classical, quantum, and statistical properties to universe structure and quantum scars.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of the Selberg trace formula to cosmological billiards, connecting hyperbolic geometry, quantum scars, and large-scale universe anisotropies.

Findings

Evidence for quantum scars in the wavefunction of the universe

Validation of semiclassical descriptions for chaotic cosmological models

New hyperbolic geometry methods for analyzing chaotic systems

Abstract

The Selberg trace formula is specified for cosmological billiards in $4=3+1$ spacetime dimensions. The spectral formula is rewritten as an exact sum over the initial conditions for the Einstein field equations for which periodic orbits are implied. For this, a suitable density of measure invariant under the billiard maps has been defined, within the statistics implied by the BKL paradigm. The trace formula has also been specified for the stochastic limit of the dynamics, where the sum over initial conditions has been demonstrated to be equivalent to a sum over suitable symmetry operations on the generators of the groups that define the billiard dynamics, and acquires different features for the different statistical maps. Evidence for scars at the quantum regime is provided. The validity of the Selberg trace formula at the classical level and in the quantum regime enforces the validity of the semiclassical descriptions of these systems, thus offering further elements for the comparison of quantum-gravity effects and the present observed structure of the universe. This procedure also constitutes a new approach in hyperbolic geometry for the application of the Selberg trace formula for a chaotic system whose orbits are associated to precise statistical distributions, for both billiard tables corresponding to the desymmetrized fundamental domain and to that a a congruence subgroup of it.