Open inflation and the singular boundary

Jaume Garriga
Phys. Rev. D 61, 047301 – Published 18 January 2000
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Abstract

The singularity in the Hawking-Turok model of open inflation has some appealing properties, such as the fact that its action is integrable. Also, if one thinks of the singularity as the boundary of spacetime, then the Gibbons-Hawking term is nonvanishing and finite. Here, we consider a model where the gravitational and scalar fields are coupled to a dynamical membrane. The singular instanton can then be obtained as the limit of a family of “no-boundary” solutions where both the geometry and the scalar field are regular. Using this procedure, the contribution of the singularity to the Euclidean action is just 1/3 of the Gibbons-Hawking term. Unrelated to this issue, we also point out that the singularity acts as a reflecting boundary for scalar perturbations and gravity waves. Therefore, the quantization of cosmological perturbations seems to be well posed in this background.

  • Received 6 April 1998

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.61.047301

©2000 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Jaume Garriga*

  • IFAE, Departament de Fisica, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain

  • *Electronic address: garriga@ifae.es

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Vol. 61, Iss. 4 — 15 February 2000

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