Predictions from Quantum Cosmology

TL;DR

This paper reviews quantum cosmology concepts and explores how different boundary conditions influence observable predictions, including the likelihood of inflation, the distribution of physical constants, and implications for cosmological phenomena.

Contribution

It analyzes how boundary conditions in quantum cosmology affect observational predictions and the probability distribution of fundamental constants, connecting theory with potential empirical tests.

Findings

Tunneling boundary conditions favor initial states leading to inflation.

Hartle-Hawking boundary conditions face difficulties with moduli fields.

The probability distribution of constants favors inflation and certain cosmological features.

Abstract

After reviewing the general ideas of quantum cosmology (Wheeler-DeWitt equation, boundary conditions, interpretation of $\psi$), I discuss how these ideas can be tested observationally. Observational predictions differ for different choices of boundary conditions. With tunneling boundary conditions, $\psi$ favors initial states that lead to inflation, while with Hartle-Hawking boundary conditions it does not. This difficulty of the Hartle-Hawking wave function becomes particularly severe if the role of `inflatons' is played by the moduli fields of superstring theories. In models where the constants of Nature can take more than one set of values, $\psi$ can also determine the probability distribution for the constants. This can be done with the aid of the `principle of mediocrity' which asserts that we are a `typical' civilization in the ensemble of universes described by $\psi$. The resulting distribution favors inflation with a very flat potential, thermalization and baryogenesis at electroweak scale, a non-negligible cosmological constant, and density fluctuations seeded either by topological defects, or by quantum fluctuations in models like hybrid inflation (as long as these features are consistent with the allowed values of the constants).