Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW D
Volume 82, Issue 6, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.82.063524
Keywords
-
Funding
- DOE Office of Nuclear Physics [DE-FG02-94ER40818]
- NSF [PHY-0600465]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
It seems generic to have vacua with lower dimensionality than ours. We consider the possibility that the observable universe originated in a transition from one of these vacua. Such a universe has anisotropic spatial curvature. This may be directly observable through its late-time effects on the CMB if the last period of slow-roll inflation was not too long. These affect the entire sky, leading to correlations which persist up to the highest CMB multipoles, thus allowing a conclusive detection above cosmic variance. Further, this anisotropic curvature causes different dimensions to expand at different rates. This leads to other potentially observable signals including a quadrupolar anisotropy in the CMB which limits the size of the curvature. Conversely, if isotropic curvature is observed it may be evidence that our parent vacuum was at least 3 + 1 dimensional. Such signals could reveal our history of decompactification, providing evidence for the existence of vastly different vacua.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available