Holographic bounds and finite inflation

TL;DR

This paper compares two holographic approaches to bounding the amount of cosmic inflation, finding they produce similar bounds but differ in details when applied to specific cosmologies.

Contribution

It analyzes and contrasts two holographic bounds on inflation, highlighting their similarities and differences through application to various cosmological models.

Findings

Both approaches yield the same bound on e-foldings.

Differences arise when applying the models to specific cosmologies.

Implementation of these bounds can be complex in practice.

Abstract

We compare two holographic arguments that impose especially strong bounds on the amount of inflation. One comes from the de Sitter Equilibrium cosmology and the other from the work of Banks and Fischler. We find that simple versions of these two approaches yield the same bound on the number of e-foldings. A careful examination reveals that while these pictures are similar in spirit, they are not necessarily identical prescriptions. We apply the two pictures to specific cosmologies which expose potentially important differences and which also demonstrate ways these seemingly simple proposals can be tricky to implement in practice.