Universe from nothing

Volume 117B, number 1, 2 PHYSICS LETTERS 4 November 1982

CREATION OF UNIVERSES FROM NOTHING

Alexander VILENKIN
Physics Department, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155, USA

Received 11 June 1982

A cosmological model is proposed in which the universe is created by quantum tunneling from literally nothing into a
de Sitter space. After the tunneling, the model evolves along the lines of the inflationary scenario. This model does not
have a big-bang singularity and does not require any initial or boundary conditions.

The standard hot cosmological model gives a suc- minimum, q~ = a. The Coleman-Weinberg potential is
cessful description of many features of the evolution very flat for small values of ~(~ ~ o), and the typical
of the universe. However, it is not totally satisfactory, rollover time, r, can be much greater than the expan-
since it requires rather unnatural initial conditions at sion time, H -1. Until q~becomes of the order a, expo-
the big bang. One has to postulate that the universe nential expansion continues, and the scale of the Ulfi-
has started in a homogeneous and isotropic state with verse grows by a factor ~ e x p (Hr) > > > 1. To solve
tiny density fluctuations which are to evolve into gal- the homogeneity and flatness problems we need
axies. Homogeneity and isotropy must extend to exp(Hr) 2 1028 [1]. Most of this growth takes place
scales far exceeding the causal horizon at the Planck after the destabilization of the false vacuum. When
time. In addition, the energy density of the universe becomes ~o, the vacuum energy thermalizes, and the
must be tuned to be near the critical density with an universe enters a radiation-dominated period. The bary-
incredible accuracy of ~ 10- 55. on number can be generated during the thermalization
In the last few years there is a growing hope of or shortly afterwards. Density fluctuations can be gen-
explaining these initial conditions as resulting from erated by vacuum strings produced at a later phase
physical processes in the very early universe. Guth [1] transition [8]. Another attractive feature of this sce-
has suggested that the homogeneity, isotropy and nario is that the problem of superabundance of heavy
flatness puzzles can be solved if the universe passed magnetic monopoles does not arise: the Higgs expec-
through a de Sitter phase of exponential expansion tation value is uniform over the whole visible universe.
(inflation) in its early history. [a(t) = exp(Ht), where Now that we have a plausible ending to the infla-
a(t) is the scale factor.] Such a phase can arise in a tionary scenario, we can start wondering about its
first order phase transition with strong supercooling. beginning, where the situation is still rather depress-
It has been suggested [ 2 - 4 ] that extreme supercooling. There is a cosmological singularity at t = 0 and
ing can occur in grand unified models with C o l e m a n - the origin of the initial thermal state is mysterious. Be-
Weinberg type of symmetry breaking. Initially it was sides, there is another problem if we assume that the
not clear how to end the exponential expansion and universe is closed (which seems to be a more aestheti-
get back to a radiation-dominated universe [ 1 - 5 ] . cally appealing choice). It is natural to assume that at
A plausible answer has emerged quite recently about Planck time (t ~ tp) the size and the energy den-
[3,4,6]. At some temperature TO the false vacuum sity of the universe are O(1) in Planck units. But then
becomes unstable due to thermal [ 2 - 4 ] or gravita- the universe will expand and recollapse in about one
tional [6,7] effects. The Higgs field ~b starts rolling Planck time, its size will never much exceed the
down the effective potential towards the absolute Planck length, and the phase of exponential expansion

0 031-9163/82/0000-0000/$02.75 © 1982 North-Holland 25

Volume l17B, number 1, 2 PHYSICS LETTERS 4 November 1982

will never be reached (assuming that the grand unifi- verse might be a quantum tunneling effect. Then the
cation mass scale is much smaller than the Planck universe has emerged having a finite size (a = H -1) and
mass, o ~ rap). In order to cool down to tempera- zero "velocity" (d = 0); its following evolution is
tures ~1014 GeV, the energy density at t ~ tp must described by eq. (4) with t > 0.
be tuned to be near the critical density with an accu- Sidney Coleman [9] has taught us that a semiclassi-
racy of ~ 1 0 -10. This is just a milder version of the cal description of quantum tunneling is given by the
same flatness problem that we faced before. bounce solution of euclidean field equations (that is,
In this paper I would like to suggest a new cos- of the field equations with t changed to -it). Normally,
mological scenario in which the universe is spontane- bounce solutions are used to describe the decay of a
ously created from literally nothing, and which is free quasistable state. If the decaying state is at the bottom
from the difficulties I mentioned in the preceding of a potential well at x = Xl, then the bounce solution
paragraph. This scenario does not require any changes starts with x = x 1 at t -~ _o% bounces off the classical
in the fundamental equations of physics; it only gives turning point at the end of the barrier, and returns to
a new interpretation to a well-known cosmological x = x 1 at t - + + oo.
solution. The euclidean version of eq. (3) is - d 2 + 1 = H2a 2,
We shall consider a model of interacting gravita- and the solution is
tional and matter fields. The matter content of the
a(t) = H -1 cos(Ht). (S)
model can be taken to be that of some grand unified
theory (GUT). The absolute minimum of the effec- Eqs. (2) and (5) describe a four-sphere, S 4. This is the
tive potential is reached when the Higgs field ~ respon- well-known de Sitter instanton [10]. The solution (5)
sible for the GUT symmetry breaking acquires a vacu- does bounce at the classical turning point (a = H - 1 ) ;
um expectation value, (qS) = o ~ mp. The symmetric however, it does not approach any initial state at
vacuum state, (~) = 0, has a nonzero energy density, t ~ +_oo.In fact, S 4 is a compact space, and the solu-
Or. For a Coleman-Weinberg potential, tion (5) is defined only for I t[ < zr/2 H. The instanton
Pv ~ g 4o4 , (l) (5) can be interpreted as describing the tunneling to de
Sitter space (4) from nothing. Then the birth of the
where g is the gauge coupling. universe is symbolically represented in fig. 1 a.
Suppose that the universe starts in the symmetric The concept of the universe being created from
vacuum state and is described by a closed R o b e r t s o n - nothing is a crazy one. To help the reader make peace
Walker metric. with this concept, I would like to give an example of a
ds 2 = dt 2 - a2(t)[dr2/(1 - r 2) + r 2 dr22] . (2) compact instanton in a more familiar setting. Let us
consider the creation of electron-positron pairs in a
The scale factor a(t) can be found from the evolution constant electric field E. For simplicity, we shall work
equation in a (1 + 1)-dimensional space-time. The energy con-
62 + 1 = ~TrGpv a2 , (3) servation law for the electron is
m(1 - v2) -1/2 - eEx = const, (6)
where d = da/dt. The solution of this equation is the
de Sitter space, where v = dx/dt, m and e are electron mass and charge,
respectively. The solution of eq. (6) is
a(t) = H -1 cosh(Ht), (4)
x x 0=+[K 2+(t- t0) 211/2, (7)
where H = (87rGpv/3) 1/2. It describes a universe which
is contracting at t < 0, reaches its minimum size where K = Im/eE[ and x0, to = const. The classical
(amin = H - l ) at t = 0, and is expanding at t > 0. This turning points are at x = x 0 + K. The instanton solu-
behaviour is analogous to that of a particle bouncing tion describing the creation of a pair is obtained from
off a potential barrier at a = H -1. (Here a plays the eq. (7) by changing t to - i t :
role of the particle coordinate.) We know that in
( x - x o ) 2 + ( t - to) 2 =K 2. (8)
quantum mechanics particles can tunnel through po-
tential barriers. This suggests that the birth of the uni- It describes a circular trajectory, that is, again we have

26

Volume 117B, number 1, 2 PHYSICS LETTERS 4 November 1982

Of course, the evaluation of the probability P is
possible because the pair creation takes place in a
background flat space. The instanton solution contri-

"•Sitter
(a) space/., ,,'/ butes to the imaginary part of the vacuum energy.
Such a calculation does not make sense for our de

,"H-' a Sitter instanton: it is silly to evaluate the imaginary
part of the energy of nothing. The only relevant ques-
tion seems to be whether or not the spontaneous cre-
ation of universes is possible. The existence of the
instanton (5) suggests that it is. One can assume, as
L usual, that instantons, being stationary points of the
euclidean action, give a dominant contribution to the
(,b)
-~ ~E D path integral of the theory. There may be several rele-
vant instanton solutions. For example, we can have a
de Sitter instanton with broken grand unified symme-
try, but unbroken Weinberg-Salam symmetry. Then
/ ;D X the vacuum energy is Pv ~ O4ws~ Pv, where aws ~ 100
-~...L..~ ~
GeV is the energy scale of the SU(2) × U(1) symme-
C try breaking. The euclidean action of a de Sitter
instanton is negative [10,13 ], SE = --3m4p/8pv. If one
Fig. 1. A schematic representation of (a) birth of the inflation-
assumes that instanton with the smallest value o f S E
ary universe and (b) pair creation in the electric field. In both
cases dashed semicircles represent the "under-barrier" part of correspond, in some sense, to most probable uni-
the trajectory. (Below the horizontal axis t is the euclidean verses, then most of the universes never heat up to
time.) The classical evolution starts at t = 0. temperatures greater than 100 GeV and have practi-
cally vanishing baryon numbers. Obviously, we must
a compact instanton. The process of pair production live in one of the rare universes which tunneled to the
is symbolically represented in fig. lb. AB and DE are symmetric vacuum state.
classically allowed trajectories. AB describes an elec- Finally, we have to discuss what happens to the
tron moving backwards in time, that is a positron. The universe after the tunneling. The symmetric vacuum
semicircle BCD represents the instanton (8). The state is not absolutely stable. It can decay by quantum
instanton solution (8) can be used to estimate the tunneling [6] or can be destabilized by quantum fluc-
semiclassical probability, P, of pair creation per unit tuations of the Higgs field [7]. The Higgs field starts
length per unit time: P = exp(-SE), where SE is the rolling down the effective potential towards the glori-
euclidean action, ous ending of the inflationary scenario, as it is discussed
in refs. [3,4,6] and at the beginning of this paper. When
SE = f[m(1 + ~2)1/2 _ eEx] dt. the vacuum energy thennalizes, the universe heats up
to a temperature T. ~ pv 1/4. In our model this is the
Introducing a new variable, 4, according to x - x0 = maximum temperature the universe has ever had. The
K c o s 4 , t - t 0 = K sin ¢, we find only verifiable (in principle) prediction of the model is
that the universe must be closed. However, Guth has
m 2 2~r argued [14] that the inflationary scenario almost cer-
SE = ~ f sin2¢ d~b - 7rm2
leEI (9) tainly overshoots, so that p = Pcrit with a very high
accuracy even at the present time. Tlfis means that we
so that P c~ exp (-Trm2/leE I), a well-known result shall have to wait for a long time until the sign of
[11] ,1 (,O -- Pcrit) can be determined experimentally. The
advantages of the scenario presented here are of aes-
+l A similar approach to the calculation of the rate of parti-
cle production in external field has been used in ref. [12]. thetic nature. It gives a cosmological model which does
I am grateful to A. Guth for pointing this out to me. not have a singularity at the big bang (there still may

27

Volume l17B, number 1, 2 PHYSICS LETTERS 4 November 1982

be a final singularity) and does not require any initial [4] A. Albrecht and P.J. Steinhardt, Phys. Rev. Lett. 48
or boundary conditions. The structure and evolution (1982) 1220;
A. Albrecht et al., Univ. of Pennsylvania preprint
of the universe(s) are totally determined b y the laws of
(1982);
physics. P.J. Steinhardt, Univ. of Pennsylvania preprint UPR-
0192T (1982).
Note added: The possibility of spontaneous crea- [5] A.H. Guth and E.J. Weinberg, MIT preprint CTP-950
tion of closed universes has been first discussed by (1982).
[6] S.W. Hawking and I.G, Moss, Phys. Lett. ll0B (1982)
Tryon [15]. Quantum tunneling of the universe as a
35.
whole has been discussed by Atkatz and Pagels [16] [7] A. Vflenkin, Phys. Lett. 115B (1982) 91;
and Hawking and Moss [17]. A. Vilenkin and L.H. Ford, Tufts Univ. preprint TUTP-
82-7 (1982).
1 wish to thank Malcolm Perry for an illuminating [8] Y.B. Zeldovich, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 192 (1980)
discussion which helped me to put my thoughts on the 663;
A. Vilenkin, Phys. Rev. Lett. 46 (1981) 1169, 1496 (E);
subject in order and which was instrumental in bringing Phys. Rev. D24 (1981) 2082.
the ideas presented here to their final form. I am also [9] S. Coleman, Phys. Rev. D15 (1977) 2929; The whys of
grateful to Larry F o r d and Alan Guth for very help- subnuclear physics, ed. A. Zichichi (Plenum, New York,
ful discussions during the course of this work. 1979).
[10] G.W. Gibbons and S.W. Hawking, Phys. Rev. D15 (1977)
2738.
References [11] J. Schwinger, Phys. Rev. 82 (1951) 664.
[12] I.K. Affleck and N.S. Manton, Nucl. Phys. 194 (1982)
[1] A.H. Guth, Phys. Rev. D23 (1981) 347. 38.
[2] E. Witten, Nucl. Phys. B177 (1981) 477; [13] S.W. Hawking, Nucl. Phys. B144 (1978) 349.
K. Tamvakis and C.E. Vayonakis, Phys. Lett. 109B [14] A.H. Guth, MIT preprint CTP-976 (1982).
(1982) 283; [15] E.P. Tryon, Nature 246 (1973) 396.
A. Billoire and K. Tamvakis, Nucl. Phys. B200 (1982) [16] D. Atkatz and H. Pagels, Phys. Rev. D25 (1982) 2065.
329. [17] S.W. Hawking and I.G. Moss, Pbys. Lett. BI10 (1982)
[3] A.D. Linde, Phys. Lett. 108B (1982) 389. 35.

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Universe from nothing

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