First Observational Tests of Eternal Inflation
Abstract
The eternal inflation scenario predicts that our observable Universe resides inside a single bubble embedded in a vast inflating multiverse. We present the first observational tests of eternal inflation, performing a search for cosmological signatures of collisions with other bubble universes in cosmic microwave background data from the WMAP satellite. We conclude that the WMAP 7-year data do not warrant augmenting the cold dark matter model with a cosmological constant with bubble collisions, constraining the average number of detectable bubble collisions on the full sky N¯s<1.6 at 68% C.L. Data from the Planck satellite can be used to more definitively test the bubble-collision hypothesis.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- August 2011
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.071301
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1012.1995
- Bibcode:
- 2011PhRvL.107g1301F
- Keywords:
-
- 98.80.Es;
- 98.70.Vc;
- 98.80.Cq;
- Observational cosmology;
- Background radiations;
- Particle-theory and field-theory models of the early Universe;
- Astrophysics - Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics;
- High Energy Physics - Phenomenology;
- High Energy Physics - Theory
- E-Print:
- Companion to arXiv:1012.3667. 5 pages, 2 figures. v3: replaced with version accepted by PRL. Significant extensions to the Bayesian pipeline to do the full-sky non-Gaussian source detection problem (previously restricted to patches). Note that this has changed the normalization of evidence values reported previously, as full-sky priors are now employed, but the conclusions remain unchanged