Accelerating universe emergent from the landscape

TL;DR

This paper suggests that the universe's acceleration can be explained by a quantum glass state in the string landscape, leading to slow dynamics and a natural explanation for dark energy and the cosmological constant.

Contribution

It introduces a novel framework linking the string landscape to a quantum glass state, explaining cosmic acceleration without moduli stabilization and predicting geometric features at the horizon.

Findings

The universe can be in a quantum glass state with high viscosity.

The cosmic horizon corresponds to a glass transition point where viscosity diverges.

The metric of the accelerating universe exhibits an infinite jump at the horizon.

Abstract

We propose that the existence of the string landscape suggests the universe can be in a quantum glass state, where an extremely large viscosity is generated, and long distance dynamics slows down. At the same time, the short distance dynamics is not altered due to the separation of time scales. This scenario can help to understand some controversies in cosmology, for example the natural existence of slow roll inflation and dark energy in the landscape, the apparent smallness of the cosmological constant. We see also that moduli stabilization is no longer necessary. We further identify the glass transition point, where the viscosity diverges, as the location of the cosmic horizon. We try to reconstruct the geometry of the accelerating universe from the structure of the landscape, and find that the metric should have an infinite jump when crossing the horizon. We predict that the static coordinate metric for dS space breaks down outside the horizon.