Reheating-volume measure for random-walk inflation

Sergei Winitzki
Phys. Rev. D 78, 063517 – Published 11 September 2008

Abstract

The recently proposed “reheating-volume” (RV) measure promises to solve the long-standing problem of extracting probabilistic predictions from cosmological multiverse scenarios involving eternal inflation. I give a detailed description of the new measure and its applications to generic models of eternal inflation of random-walk type. For those models I derive a general formula for RV-regulated probability distributions that is suitable for numerical computations. I show that the results of the RV cutoff in random-walk type models are always gauge invariant and independent of the initial conditions at the beginning of inflation. In a toy model where equal-time cutoffs lead to the “youngness paradox,” the RV cutoff yields unbiased results that are distinct from previously proposed measures.

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  • Received 7 June 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.78.063517

©2008 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Sergei Winitzki

  • Department of Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, Germany
  • Yukawa Institute of Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

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Issue

Vol. 78, Iss. 6 — 15 September 2008

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