The phase transition to eternal inflation

2008/02/07 by Paolo Creminelli, Sergei Dubovsky, Alberto Nicolis +2 · 1 voice · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research

paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1126-6708/2008/09/036

Abstract

For slow-roll inflation we study the phase transition to the eternal regime. Starting from a finite inflationary volume, we consider the volume of the universe at reheating as order parameter. We show that there exists a critical value for the classical inflaton speed, φ²/H⁴ = 3/(2 π²), where the probability distribution for the reheating volume undergoes a sharp transition. In particular, for sub-critical inflaton speeds all distribution moments become infinite. We show that at the same transition point the system develops a non-vanishing probability of having a strictly infinite reheating volume, while retaining a finite probability for finite values. Our analysis represents the exact quantum treatment of the system at lowest order in the slow-roll parameters and H²/M_Pl².

Cited by

• Friction in Stochastic Inflation
• A smooth exit from eternal inflation?

Discussions

• Dec 11 - The Phase Transition to Eternal Inflation arxiv.org/abs/0802.1067 Creminelli et al define the transition to slow-roll eternal inflation by the diverging volume of the reheating surface. The [bsky, 14 points, 1 comments]

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