Spontaneous creation of the universe from nothing

Dongshan He, Dongfeng Gao, and Qing-yu Cai
Phys. Rev. D 89, 083510 – Published 3 April 2014

Abstract

An interesting idea is that the universe could be spontaneously created from nothing, but no rigorous proof has been given. In this paper, we present such a proof based on the analytic solutions of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation (WDWE). Explicit solutions of the WDWE for the special operator ordering factor p=2 (or 4) show that, once a small true vacuum bubble is created by quantum fluctuations of the metastable false vacuum, it can expand exponentially no matter whether the bubble is closed, flat, or open. The exponential expansion will end when the bubble becomes large and thus the early universe appears. With the de Broglie–Bohm quantum trajectory theory, we show explicitly that it is the quantum potential that plays the role of the cosmological constant and provides the power for the exponential expansion of the true vacuum bubble. So it is clear that the birth of the early universe completely depends on the quantum nature of the theory.

  • Received 21 September 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.89.083510

© 2014 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Dongshan He1,2, Dongfeng Gao1, and Qing-yu Cai1,*

  • 1State Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonances and Atomic and Molecular Physics, Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, China
  • 2Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China

  • *Corresponding author. qycai@wipm.ac.cn

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Issue

Vol. 89, Iss. 8 — 15 April 2014

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