https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-018-6357-0
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Why concave rather than convex inflaton potential?
1
Leung Center for Cosmology and Particle Astrophysics, Department of Physics, Graduate Institute of Astrophysics, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 10617, Taiwan
2
Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, California, 94305, USA
3
Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics, Pohang, 37673, Republic of Korea
4
Department of Physics, POSTECH, Pohang, 37673, Republic of Korea
* e-mail: innocent.yeom@gmail.com
Received:
29
July
2018
Accepted:
18
October
2018
Published online:
26
October
2018
The Planck data on cosmic microwave background indicates that the Starobinsky-type model with concave inflation potential is favored over the convex-type chaotic inflation. Is there any reason for that? Here we argue that if our universe began with a Euclidean wormhole, then the Starobinsky-type inflation is probabilistically favored. It is known that for a more generic choice of parameters than that originally assumed by Hartle and Hawking, the Hartle–Hawking wave function is dominated by Euclidean wormholes, which can be interpreted as the creation of two classical universes from nothing. We show that only one end of the wormhole can be classicalized for a convex potential, while both ends can be classicalized for a concave potential. The latter is therefore more probable.
© The Author(s), 2018
