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Eternal Inflation and Past Incompleteness

Alan Guth
Abstract: 

Many inflating spacetimes are likely to violate the weak energy condition, a key assumption of many singularity theorems. In this talk I will describe a recent theorem by Vilenkin, Borde, and me which uses a simple kinematical argument, independent of any energy conditions, to show that a cosmological model that is inflating-- or just expanding sufficiently fast-- must be incomplete in null and timelike past directions. Specifically, we obtained a bound on the integral of the Hubble parameter over a past-directed timelike or null geodesic. Thus inflationary models require physics other than inflation to describe the past boundary of the inflating region of spacetime.

Date: 
Thursday, 31 January, 2002 - 15:30
Seminar Location: 
Room 104, Pavillon René JA Lévesque

Source URL: https://www.lps.umontreal.ca/en/seminar/eternal-inflation-and-past-incompleteness