Local observation in eternal inflation

We consider landscape models that admit several regions where the conditions for eternal inflation hold. It is shown that one can use the no-boundary wave function to calculate small departures from homogeneity within our past light cone despite the possibility of much larger fluctuations on super horizon scales. The dominant contribution comes from the history exiting eternal inflation at the lowest value of the potential. In a class of landscape models this predicts a tensor to scalar ratio of about 10%. In this way the no-boundary wave function defines a measure for the prediction of local cosmological observations.     

A note on infinities in eternal inflation

In some well-known scenarios of open-universe eternal inflation, developed by Vilenkin and co-workers, a large number of universes nucleate and thermalize within the eternally inflating mega-universe. According to the proposal, each universe nucleates at a point, and therefore the boundary of the nucleated universe is a space-like surface nearly coincident with the future light cone emanating from the point of nucleation, all points of which have the same proper-time. This leads the authors to conclude that at the proper-time t  =  t _nuc at which any such nucleation occurs, an infinite open universe comes into existence. We point out that this is due entirely to the supposition of the nucleation occurring at a single point, which in light of quantum cosmology seems difficult to support. Even an infinitesimal space-like length at the moment of nucleation gives a rather different result—the boundary of the nucleating universe evolves in proper time and becomes infinite only in an infinite time. The alleged infinity is never attained at any finite time.     

Measures on transitions for cosmology from eternal inflation

We argue that, in the context of eternal inflation in the landscape, making predictions for cosmological--and possibly particle physics--observables requires a measure on the possible cosmological histories as opposed to one on the vacua themselves. If significant slow-roll inflation occurs, the observables are generally determined by the history after the last transition between metastable vacua. Hence, we start from several existing measures for counting vacua and develop measures for counting the transitions between vacua.     

The observational constraint on constant-roll inflation

We discuss the constant-roll inflation with constant ∈_2 and constant η. By using the method of Bessel function approximation, the analytical expressions for the scalar and tensor power spectra, the scalar and tensor spectral tilts, and the tensor to scalar ratio are derived up to the first order of ∈_1. The model with constant ∈_2 is ruled out by the observations at the 3σ confidence level, and the model with constant η is consistent with the observations at the 1σ confidence level. The potential for the model with constant η is also obtained from the Hamilton-Jacobi equation. Although the observations constrain the constant-roll inflation to be the slow-roll inflation, the ns-r results from the constant-roll inflation are not the same as those from the slow-roll inflation even when η～ 0.01.     

An eternal universe

We present a new generalized solution of Maxwell-Einstein equations (which are nonminimally coupled) which leads to some fascinating aspects of the Universe. The Cosmos has no singularity due to the coupling of longitudinal electromagnetism with space-time. It contains the Milne-Schucking cosmos as a limiting case. Our model contains a free parameter (the longitudinal electromagnetic field) which allows one to fix the density of highest compression of the Cosmos. Alternatively the parameter allows one to adjust our cosmos to the presently observed Hubble constant and the deceleration parameter. The model seems to be a viable candidate for our real cosmos as it allows one to extend the time scale of the Universe to arbitrarily large values, i.e., it is able to provide the necessary time scale for the origin of life. We speculate that the entropy is finite but intelligence in the Universe may be infinite.Partially supported by IBM do Brasil.     

Comparing potential-driven DBI-inspired non-minimal kinetic coupling(Dinkic) inflation with observational data

In our previous work [1], a new kind of inflation model was proposed, which has the interesting property that its perturbation equation of motion gets a correction of k4, due to the non-linearity of the kinetic term.Nonetheless, the scale-invariance of the power spectrum remains valid, both in large-k and small-k limits. In this paper, we investigate in detail the spectral index, the index running and the tensor/scalar ratio in this model, especially in the potential-driven case, and compare the results with the current PLANCK/BICEP observational data.We also discuss the tensor spectrum in this case, which is expected to be tested by future observations of primordial gravitational waves.     

Optical 3-D dynamic measurement system and its application to polymer membrane inflation tests

An optical surface measurement system, which is capable of measuring transient surface shape, has been developed by using a high-speed digital camera. The system is based on the grating projection and Fourier transform technique. A calibration procedure is developed to allow the system to generate Cartesian coordinates directly, which are with respect to a fixed coordinate system in 3-D space. The measurement accuracy (±50 μm) is defined and verified as the maximum error between measured values and the known values of standard objects both flat and curved. The camera and a grating projector are mounted into a portable sensor head to allow in situ measurements. In addition, external force or pressure signals can be correlated with each measurement through a device called the multi-channel data link. The system is capable of digitizing a 3-D curved surface into an array of points with known xyz coordinates at a sampling rate from 30 to 1000 Hz. As an application, the system is used to measure the transient surface shape during a polymer membrane inflation test. The measurement results along with the pressure information provide an approach to determine the material parameters used in different material models.     

First symmetry tests in polarized Z0 decays to bbg

We have made the first direct symmetry tests in the decays of polarized Z0 bosons into fully identified bbg states, collected in the SLD experiment at SLAC. We searched for evidence of parity violation at the bbg vertex by studying the asymmetries in the b-quark polar- and azimuthal-angle distributions, and for evidence of T-odd, CP-even or CP-odd, final-state interactions by measuring angular correlations between the three-jet plane and the Z0 polarization. We found results consistent with standard model expectations and set 95% C. limits on anomalous contributions.     

First tests of the active shield for a gamma ray spectrometer

The operational problems of the gamma ray spectrometer shielded passively with 12 cm of lead and actively by five $0.5\mathrm{m}\times 0.5\mathrm{m}\times 0.05\mathrm{m}$ plastic veto shields are described. The active shielding effect from environmental gamma ray, cosmic muons, and neutrons was investigated. Wide range of scintillator pulses, corresponding to the energy range of 150 keV–75 MeV, was used for anticoincidence gating. With the optimal set up, the integral background of 0.31 c/s was achieved for the energy region of 50–3000 keV. The detector mass-related background was 0.345 c/kg s. The 511 keV annihilation line was reduced by factor of 7 by the anticoincidence gate. It is shown that the plastic shields increase the neutron capture gamma line intensities due to neutron termalization.     

Effects of adopting inflation targeting regimes on inflation variability

This paper investigates whether inflation-targeting programs have altered the pattern of inflation and its variability for five developed countries and four emerging economies implementing inflation-targeting programs. A GARCH specification is used to model inflation variability, which accounts for public perception of the future levels of inflation variability—conditional variance. We could not find lower conditional inflation expectations except for Australia, Chile and Sweden under various specifications. Moreover, the conditional variance decreases only for Chile and the UK. Therefore, the empirical support for the lower inflation and its variability for the inflation targeting regimes is limited.     

Chaotic inflation

We investigate the conditions under which the chaotic inflationary model can provide sufficient inflation to solve the usual cosmological problems. We use a mixture of analytic and numerical techniques to examine the success of the model in cases where spatial curvatures of the background metric are large and when the scalar field lagrangian includes contributions from velocity terms and spatial gradients. Using the simplest natural measure on the space of initial conditions, we calculate the probability of obtaining sufficient inflation given random initial conditions when velocity terms and curvature terms are included. We find this probability to be large in all cases considered. We also derive conditions under which scalar field inhomogeneities will not affect the viability of inflation.