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arXiv · 1704.06994

Initial conditions for slow-roll inflation in a random Gaussian landscape

Ali Masoumi·Alexander Vilenkin·Masaki Yamada
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Abstract

In the landscape perspective, our Universe begins with a quantum tunneling from an eternally-inflating parent vacuum, followed by a period of slow-roll inflation. We investigate the tunneling process and calculate the probability distribution for the initial conditions and for the number of e-folds of slow-roll inflation, modeling the landscape by a small-field one-dimensional random Gaussian potential. We find that such a landscape is fully consistent with observations, but the probability for future detection of spatial curvature is rather low, $P \sim 10^{-3}$.

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Ali Masoumi, Alexander Vilenkin, Masaki Yamada. 2017-04-23. Initial conditions for slow-roll inflation in a random Gaussian landscape. https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516%2F2017%2F07%2F003

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