Universality of the volume bound in slow-roll eternal inflation

• Published in: The journal of high energy physics Vol. 2012; no. 5
• Main Authors: Dubovsky, Sergei, Senatore, Leonardo, Villadoro, Giovanni
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer-Verlag 01.05.2012; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Case depth; Classical and Quantum Gravitation; CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS; DIMENSIONS; DISTRIBUTION; Elementary Particles; ENTROPY; High energy physics; Inflation (cosmology); Phase transitions; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; PROBABILITY; Quantum Field Theories; Quantum Field Theory; Quantum Physics; Relativity Theory; SPACE-TIME; String Theory; TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER; Theory-HEP,HEPTH, GRQC; Space-Time Symmetries; Cosmology of Theories beyond the SM; Stochastic Processes; Models of Quantum Gravity
• ISSN: 1029-8479; 1029-8479
• DOI: 10.1007/JHEP05(2012)035

A bstract It has recently been shown that in single field slow-roll inflation the total volume cannot grow by a factor larger than without becoming infinite. The bound is saturated exactly at the phase transition to eternal inflation where the probability to produce infinite volume becomes non zero. We show that the bound holds sharply also in any space-time dimensions, when arbitrary higher-dimensional operators are included and in the multi-field inflationary case. The relation with the entropy of de Sitter and the universality of the bound strengthen the case for a deeper holographic interpretation. As a spin-off we provide the formalism to compute the probability distribution of the volume after inflation for generic multi-field models, which might help to address questions about the population of vacua of the landscape during slow-roll inflation.