Does Inflation Provide Natural Initial Conditions for the Universe? Export

@misc{citeulike:440108, abstract = {If our universe underwent inflation, its entropy during the inflationary phase was substantially lower than it is today. Because a low-entropy state is less likely to be chosen randomly than a high-entropy one, inflation is unlikely to arise through randomly-chosen initial conditions. To resolve this puzzle, we examine the notion of a natural state for the universe, and argue that it is a nearly-empty spacetime. If empty space has a small vacuum energy, however, inflation can begin spontaneously in this background. This scenario explains why a universe like ours is likely to have begun via a period of inflation, and also provides an origin for the cosmological arrow of time.}, archivePrefix = {arXiv}, author = {Carroll, Sean M. and Chen, Jennifer}, citeulike-article-id = {440108}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0505037}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0505037}, day = {9}, eprint = {gr-qc/0505037}, keywords = {cosmology, philosophy, philsci, physics, probability}, month = {May}, posted-at = {2007-12-31 11:36:59}, priority = {0}, title = {Does Inflation Provide Natural Initial Conditions for the Universe?}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0505037}, year = {2005} }

TY - ELEC ID - citeulike:440108 L3 - citeulike-article-id:440108 N2 - If our universe underwent inflation, its entropy during the inflationary phase was substantially lower than it is today. Because a low-entropy state is less likely to be chosen randomly than a high-entropy one, inflation is unlikely to arise through randomly-chosen initial conditions. To resolve this puzzle, we examine the notion of a natural state for the universe, and argue that it is a nearly-empty spacetime. If empty space has a small vacuum energy, however, inflation can begin spontaneously in this background. This scenario explains why a universe like ours is likely to have begun via a period of inflation, and also provides an origin for the cosmological arrow of time. TI - Does Inflation Provide Natural Initial Conditions for the Universe? KW - cosmology KW - philosophy KW - philsci KW - physics KW - probability AU - Carroll, Sean AU - Chen, Jennifer PY - 2005/May/09/ UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0505037 ER -