Holographic Cosmology Workshop - 2009

We propose a holographic description of four dimensional single scalar inflationary universes, in particular asymptotically de Sitter cosmologies and power-law inflation. We show how cosmological observables such as the primordial power spectrum and non-gaussianities are encoded in correlation functions of a three dimensional QFT.

I review three challenges faced by attempts to develop a quantum theory of the universe and examine possible relationships between them. 1) The clock ambiguity: The choice of time parameter leads to profound ambiguities. 2) The choice of state: I contrast the de Sitter equilibrium picture with eternal inflation. 3) The Born rule crisis: The born rule is insufficient to construct probabilities in a large multiverse without additional rules or assumptions (as discussed by Don Page).

Cosmological bubble collisions arising from first order phase transitions are a generic consequence of the Eternal Inflation scenario. I will present our computational strategy for generating and evolving these bubbles in 3+1 dimensions and in a self-consistently expanding background. I will show the existence of classical field transitions--the classical nucleation of bubbles during collisions--which can dramatically alter the canonical description of eternal inflation.

Recently there has been renewed interest in cosmological gravity, namely 3d gravity coupled to a Chern-Simons term with parameter $\mu$, following claims that at $\mu =1$ the theory becomes chiral and stable. In this talk we will investigate cosmological gravity by setting up a concrete holographic dictionary with a dual 2d field theory and we will demonstrate that the theory is in fact not chiral in the limit $\mu = 1$. Instead our holographic dictionary implies that at $\mu =1$ the dual field theory becomes a logarithmic CFT (LCFT). Our results resolve confusions in the earlier literature and the resulting new class of holographic dualities involving LCFTs may have interesting applications to strongly correlated condensed matter systems.

Non-equilibrium processes such as inflationary preheating or the ekpyrotic bounce can turn fluctuations of light scalar fields into potentially highly non-Gaussian curvature perturbations. I show how these perturbations can be calculated at fully non-linear level using lattice field theory simulations. As concrete examples, I present results for preheating in chaotic inflation and resonant curvaton decay.