The size of our causal Universe

Abstract

ABSTRACT A Universe with finite age also has a finite causal scale. Larger scales cannot affect our local measurements or modelling, but far away locations could have different cosmological parameters. The size of our causal Universe depends on the details of inflation and is usually assumed to be larger than our observable Universe today. To account for causality, we propose a new boundary condition, that can be fulfill by fixing the cosmological constant (a free geometric parameter of gravity). This forces a cancellation of vacuum energy with the cosmological constant. As a consequence, the measured cosmic acceleration cannot be explained by a simple cosmological constant or constant vacuum energy. We need some additional odd properties such as the existence of evolving dark energy (DE) with energy-density fine tuned to be twice that of dark matter today. We show here that we can instead explain the current cosmic acceleration without DE (or modified gravity) as a the result of a primordial inflation with a causal scale smaller than the observable Universe today. Such scale corresponds to half the sky at z = 1 and 60 deg at z= 1100, which is consistent with the anomalous lack of correlations observed in the CMB.