Interpretation of “the wave function of the Universe”

Hawking and Hartle interpreted their wave function of the universe as giving the probability for the universe to appear from nothing. However, this is not a correct interpretation, since the normalization presupposes a universe, not nothing. Transition probabilities require a measure on the initial state and a physical result requires a physical initial state.     

The gravitational wave symphony of the Universe

The new millennium will see the upcoming of several ground-based interferometric gravitational wave antennas. Within the next decade a space-based antenna may also begin to observe the distant Universe. These gravitational wave detectors will together operate as a network taking data continuously for several years, watching the transient and continuous phenomena occurring in the deep cores of astronomical objects and dense environs of the early Universe where gravity was extremely strong and highly nonlinear. The network will listen to the waves from rapidly spinning non-axisymmetric neutron stars, normal modes of black holes, binary black hole inspiral and merger, phase transitions in the early Universe, quantum fluctuations resulting in a characteristic background in the early Universe. The gravitational wave antennas will open a new window to observe the dark Universe unreachable via other channels of astronomical observations.     

Detecting relics of a thermal gravitational wave background in the early Universe

A thermal gravitational wave background can be produced in the early Universe if a radiation dominated epoch precedes the usual inflationary stage. This background provides a unique way to study the initial state of the Universe. We discuss the imprint of this thermal spectra of gravitons on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) power spectra, and its possible detection by CMB observations. Assuming the inflationary stage is a pure de Sitter expansion we find that, if the number of e-folds of inflation is smaller than 65, the signal of this thermal spectrum can be detected by the observations of Planck and PolarBear experiments, or the planned EPIC experiments. This bound can be even looser if inflation-like stage is the sub-exponential.     

Wave function of the Universe in the early stage of its evolution

In quantum cosmological models, constructed in the framework of Friedmann–Robertson–Walker metrics, a nucleation of the Universe with its further expansion is described as a tunneling transition through an effective barrier between regions with small and large values of the scale factor a at non-zero (or zero) energy. The approach for describing this tunneling consists of constructing a wave function satisfying an appropriate boundary condition. There are various ways for defining the boundary condition that lead to different estimates of the barrier penetrability and the tunneling time. In order to describe the escape from the tunneling region as accurately as possible and to construct the total wave function on the basis of its two partial solutions unambiguously, we use the tunneling boundary condition that the total wave function must represent only the outgoing wave at the point of escape from the barrier, where the following definition for the wave is introduced: the wave is represented by the wave function whose modulus changes minimally under a variation of the scale factor a. We construct a new method for a direct non-semiclassical calculation of the total stationary wave function of the Universe, analyze the behavior of this wave function in the tunneling region, near the escape point and in the asymptotic region, and estimate the barrier penetrability. We observe oscillations of the modulus of the wave function in the external region starting from the turning point which decrease with increasing of a and which are not shown in semiclassical calculations. The period of such an oscillation decreases uniformly with increasing a and can be used as a fully quantum dynamical characteristic of the expansion of the Universe.     

The collapse of the wave function

Probability distributions are seen to be observer dependent. The probability function can be put into an observer-dependent form. This eliminates the acausal behavior of the collapse of the wave function.     

Bayesian estimation of the wave function

Recently there have been many theoretical works on statistical inference in quantum systems. In the present Letter, we deal with the estimation of an unknown wave function under the assumption of a general parametric model. We propose the Bayesian estimation of a wave function and show the optimality result when we adopt the Bures distance as a loss function. We see some examples where the quantum state is better estimated by our method than by that based on the maximum-likelihood estimate.     

Normalization of the quasisteady-state wave function

Russian Physics Journal -     

On the wave function of the universe

A discussion of the wave function for an isotropic universe is given. In order to alleviate that wave function from some of the quantum gravity difficulties, a logarithmic factor $\text{1 ? ln(}\text{R}\text{R}{}_0\text{)}$ is introduced in the gravitational action integral. The discussion is extended to the primordial Coleman-Weinberg scenario.     

Debugging the Universe

Many authors have asked whether our universe can be understood as a kind of computational process. This paper asks the opposite question: What are the challenges we would face in writing a program (or, more generally, creating a computation) to implement a physically plausible universe?     

Entropy of the Universe

After a discussion on several limiting cases where General Relativity turns into less sophisticated theories, we find that in the correct thermodynamical and cosmological weak field limit of Einstein’s field equations the entropy of the Universe is R ^3/2-dependent, where R stands for the radius of the causally related Universe. Thus, entropy grows in the Universe, contrary to Standard Cosmology prediction.     

The statistical wave function

Statistical considerations are applied to quantum mechanical amplitudes. The physical motivation is the progress in the spectroscopy of highly excited states, The corresponding wave functions are strongly mixed. In terms of a basis set of eigenfunctions of a zeroth-order Hamiltonian with good quantum numbers, such wave functions have contributions from many basis states. The vector x is considered whose components are the expansion coefficients in that basis. Any amplitude can be written as a·x. It is argued that the components of x and hence other amplitudes can be regarded as random variables. The maximum entropy formalism is applied to determine the corresponding distribution function. Two amplitudes a·x and b·x are independently distributed if b·a=0. It is suggested that the theory of quantal measurements implies that, in general, one can one determine the distribution of amplitudes and not the amplitudes themselves.This paper is dedicated to Prof. Howard Reiss on the occasion of his 66th birthday.     

Intermediate wave function statistics

We calculate statistical properties of the eigenfunctions of two quantum systems that exhibit intermediate spectral statistics: star graphs and Seba billiards. First, we show that these eigenfunctions are not quantum ergodic, and calculate the corresponding limit distribution. Second, we find that they can be strongly scarred, in the case of star graphs by short (unstable) periodic orbits and, in the case of Seba billiards, by certain families of orbits. We construct sequences of states which have such a limit. Our results are illustrated by numerical computations.     

Holomorphic extension of the logistic sequence

The logistic problem is formulated in terms of the Superfunction and Abelfunction of the quadratic transfer function H(z) = uz(1 − z). The Superfunction F as holomorphic solution of equation H(F(z)) = F(z + 1) generalizes the logistic sequence to the complex values of the argument z. The efficient algorithm for the evaluation of function F and its inverse function, id est, the Abelfunction G are suggested; F(G(z)) = z. The halfiteration h(z) = F(1/2 + G(z)) is constructed; in wide range of values z, the relation h(h(z)) = H(z) holds. For the special case u = 4, the Superfunction F and the Abelfunction G are expressed in terms of elementary functions.     

When is the wave function single-valued?

It is shown that single-valuedness of the wave function can be lost because of an external field approximation. The Aharonov-Bohm effect is studied in detail as an example of the problem. Specifically, it is shown that the solenoid (represented as a rotating, charged cylinder) has a wave function that undergoes a phase shift equal in magnitude, but with opposite sign, to the phase shift suffered by the electron's wave function when the electron passes the solenoid.     

The nucleon wave function at the origin

We calculate the next-to-leading order perturbative corrections to the SVZ sum rules for the coupling fN$f_N$, the nucleon leading twist wave function at the origin. The results are compared to the established Ioffe sum rules and also to lattice QCD simulations.