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arXiv · 2608.18983

Duru-Kleinert Path Integral in Unimodular Quantum Cosmology

Xiao-Kan Guo
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Abstract

The Wheeler-DeWitt equation of a flat Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker universe filled with pressureless dust and a cosmological constant in the unimodular gravity is recently shown to be equivalent to the radial Schr\"odinger equation of a hydrogen atom. In this paper, we revisit this correspondence between the unimodular quantum cosmology and the hydrogen atom by using the Duru-Kleinert path integration technique. The Duru-Kleinert time reparametrization transforms the Euclidean path integral of the universe into that of a one-dimensional Coulomb system. Through a Mellin-Barnes integral representation, we extract the bound state poles of the Green's function, which give the quantized negative cosmological constant. We compute the quantum tunneling rate from ``nothing'' to a universe directly within the Coulomb model. Furthermore, for a positive cosmological constant, we compute the spectral density and the Krylov complexity for the unbounded state.

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Xiao-Kan Guo. 2026-08-19. Duru-Kleinert Path Integral in Unimodular Quantum Cosmology. https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.18983

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