Imperial College London
Alternate

Prof Joao Magueijo

Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Physics

Professor of Physics
 
 
 
//

Contact

 

j.magueijo Website

 
 
//

Location

 

Huxley BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

//

Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Afshordi:2022:10.1103/physrevd.106.123518,
author = {Afshordi, N and Magueijo, J},
doi = {10.1103/physrevd.106.123518},
journal = {Physical Review D},
pages = {1--10},
title = {Lower bound on the cosmological constant from the classicality of the early Universe},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.106.123518},
volume = {106},
year = {2022}
}
Download

RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - We use the quantum unimodular theory of gravity to relate the value of the cosmological constant, Λ, and the energy scale for the emergence of cosmological classicality. The fact that Λ and unimodular time are complementary quantum variables implies a perennially quantum Universe should Λ be zero (or, indeed, fixed at any value). Likewise, the smallness of Λ puts an upper bound on its uncertainty, and thus a lower bound on the unimodular clock’s uncertainty or the cosmic time for the emergence of classicality. Far from being the Planck scale, classicality arises at around 7×1011  GeV for the observed Λ, and taking the region of classicality to be our Hubble volume. We confirm this argument with a direct evaluation of the wave function of the Universe in the connection representation for unimodular theory. Our argument is robust, with the only leeway being in the comoving volume of our cosmological classical patch, which should be bigger than that of the observed last scattering surface. Should it be taken to be the whole of a closed Universe, then the constraint depends weakly on Ωk: for −Ωk<10−3, classicality is reached at >4×1012  GeV. If it is infinite, then this energy scale is infinite, and the Universe is always classical within the minisuperspace approximation. It is a remarkable coincidence that the only way to render the Universe classical just below the Planck scale is to define the size of the classical patch as the scale of nonlinearity for a red spectrum with the observed spectral index ns=0.967(4) (about 1011 times the size of the current Hubble volume). In the context of holographic cosmology, we may interpret this size as the scale of confinement in the dual 3D quantum field theory, which may be probed (directly or indirectly) with future cosmological surveys.
AU  - Afshordi,N
AU  - Magueijo,J
DO  - 10.1103/physrevd.106.123518
EP  - 10
PY  - 2022///
SN  - 2470-0010
SP  - 1
TI  - Lower bound on the cosmological constant from the classicality of the early Universe
T2  - Physical Review D
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.106.123518
UR  - https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.106.123518
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/101902
VL  - 106
ER  -
Download