Cosmic Inflation and the Arrow of Time

2002/10/24 by Andreas Albrecht, Albrecht, Andreas
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #astro-ph #gr-qc #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0210527

34 pages including 10 figures. To appear in "Science and Ultimate Reality: From Quantum to Cosmos", honoring John Wheeler's 90th birthday. J. D. Barrow, P.C.W. Davies, & C.L. Harper eds. Cambridge University Press (2003) V3: Final version submitted to the editors. Differences from V2: Only added references and fixed typos

Abstract

Cosmic inflation claims to make the initial conditions of the standard big bang "generic". But Boltzmann taught us that the thermodynamic arrow of time arises from very non-generic ("low entropy") initial conditions. I discuss how to reconcile these perspectives. The resulting insights give an interesting way to understand inflation and also compare inflation with other ideas that claim to offer alternative theories of initial conditions.

Related

• The Arrow of Time and the Initial Conditions of the Universe
• Spontaneous Inflation and the Origin of the Arrow of Time
• Cosmic Inflation: How the Universe became locally flat and plentiful
• Entropy Production and Cosmological Inflation
• The Thermodynamical Arrow of Time: Reinterpreting the Boltzmann-Schuetz Argument