Abstract
We argue that the total number of distinguishable locally Friedmann “universes” generated by eternal inflation is proportional to the exponent of the entropy of inflationary perturbations and is limited by , where is the number of -folds of slow-roll posteternal inflation. For simplest models of chaotic inflation, is approximately equal to de Sitter entropy at the end of eternal inflation; it can be exponentially large. However, not all of these universes can be observed by a local observer. In the presence of a cosmological constant the number of distinguishable universes is bounded by . In the context of the string theory landscape, the overall number of different universes is expected to be exponentially greater than the total number of vacua in the landscape. We discuss the possibility that the strongest constraint on the number of distinguishable universes may be related not to the properties of the multiverse but to the properties of observers.
- Received 8 December 2009
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.81.083525
©2010 American Physical Society