Big Bounce Research Articles

On the propagation across the big bounce in an open quantum FLRW cosmology

The propagation of a scalar field in an open FLRW bounce-type quantum spacetime is examined, which arises within the framework of the IKKT matrix theory. In the first part of the paper, we employ general-relativity tools to study null and timelike geodesics at the classical level. This analysis reveals that massless and massive non-interacting particles can travel across the big bounce. We then exploit quantum-field-theory techniques to evaluate the scalar field propagator. In the late-time regime, we find that it resembles the standard Feynman propagator of flat Minkowski space, whereas for early times it governs the propagation across the big bounce and gives rise to a well-defined correlation between two points on opposite sheets of the spacetime.

Accessing a Big Bounce Universe with Concealed Mass and Gravitation

Accessing a Big Bounce Universe with Concealed Mass and Gravitation

Emergent cosmology from quantum gravity in the Lorentzian Barrett-Crane tensorial group field theory model

We study the cosmological sector of the Lorentzian Barrett-Crane (BC) model coupled to a free massless scalar field in its Group Field Theory (GFT) formulation, corresponding to the mean-field hydrodynamics obtained from coherent condensate states. The relational evolution of the condensate with respect to the scalar field yields effective dynamics of homogeneous and isotropic cosmologies, similar to those previously obtained in SU(2)-based EPRL-like models. Also in this manifestly Lorentzian setting, in which only continuous SL(2,ℂ)-representations are used, we obtain generalized Friedmann equations that generically exhibit a quantum bounce, and can reproduce all of the features of the cosmological dynamics of EPRL-like models. This lends support to the expectation that the EPRL-like and BC models may lie in the same continuum universality class, and that the quantum gravity mechanism producing effective bouncing scenarios may not depend directly on the discretization of geometric observables.

Phantom-like dark energy from quantum gravity

We analyse the emergent cosmological dynamics corresponding to the mean field hydrodynamics of quantum gravity condensates, in the group field theory formalism. We focus in particular on the cosmological effects of fundamental interactions, and on the contributions from different quantum geometric modes. The general consequence of such interactions is to produce an accelerated expansion of the universe, which can happen both at early times, after the quantum bounce predicted by the model, and at late times. Our main result is that, while this fails to give a compelling inflationary scenario in the early universe, it produces naturally a phantom-like dark energy dynamics at late times, compatible with cosmological observations. By recasting the emergent cosmological dynamics in terms of an effective equation of state, we show that it can generically cross the phantom divide, purely out of quantum gravity effects without the need of any additional phantom matter. Furthermore, we show that the dynamics avoids any Big Rip singularity, approaching instead a de Sitter universe asymptotically.

Quantum Hǒrava-Lifshitz cosmology in the de Broglie–Bohm interpretation

Classical and quantum Friedmann-Lema\^itre-Robertson-Walker universes filled with non-interacting radiation and dust fluids are considered in the framework of Ho\v{r}ava-Lifshitz gravity theory. The Ho\v{r}ava-Lifshitz theory is set in its projectable version and without detailed balance condition. Canonical quantization is performed in the Wheeler-DeWitt approach of quantum cosmology for a minisuperspace model in the light of de Broglie-Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics. The main results are analytical solutions for non-singular quantum bounce and cyclic universes for open and closed spatial sections in terms of the parameters of Ho\v{r}ava-Lifshitz theory.

Primordial perturbations in kinetically dominated regimes of general relativity and hybrid quantum cosmology

Scalar fields with an energy density dominated by its kinetic part may have played a relevant role in the very early stages of the Universe. Compared to the standard inflationary paradigm, they may lead to modifications in observable quantities, e.g. the anisotropies found in the cosmic microwave background. Kinetically dominated regimes arise in classical fast-roll scenarios as well as in quantum bouncing cosmologies. For instance, kinetic dominance is typical in interesting preinflationary phases of Loop Quantum Cosmology. In this work, we analyze the leading-order effects that the presence of a scalar field potential causes on the primordial cosmological perturbations in these kinetically dominated epochs. These effects can be grouped in two sets, namely, those that affect the effective mass of the perturbations and those that affect the choice of their vacuum state. The effective mass is modified directly by terms that include the potential, but also indirectly by the change in the background dynamics and the relation between the parameterization of these dynamics and the conformal time, usually employed to describe the evolution of the perturbations. On the other hand, away from de Sitter inflation, the Bunch-Davies state is no longer the most natural vacuum at all scales. Recent proposals suggest to modify it by carrying out certain Hamiltonian diagonalization with a suitable asymptotic behavior at large wavenumber scales. Both this diagonalization condition and the imposed asymptotic behavior depend on the effective mass of the perturbations, and therefore the selected vacuum state varies in the presence of the scalar field potential.

Loop quantum gravity and cosmological constant

A one-parameter regularization freedom of the Hamiltonian constraint for loop quantum gravity is analyzed. The corresponding spatially flat, homogenous and isotropic model includes the two well-known models of loop quantum cosmology as special cases. The quantum bounce nature is tenable in the generalized cases. For positive value of the regularization parameter, the effective Hamiltonian leads to an asymptotic de-Sitter branch of the Universe connecting to the standard Friedmann branch by the quantum bounce. Remarkably, by suitably choosing the value of the regularization parameter, the observational cosmological constant can emerge at large volume limit from the effect of quantum gravity, and the effective Newtonian constant satisfies the experimental restrictions in the meantime.

Effective actions for loop quantum cosmology in fourth-order gravity

Loop quantum cosmology (LQC) is a theory which renders the Big Bang initial singularity into a quantum bounce, by means of short-range repulsive quantum effects at the Planck scale. In this work, we are interested in reproducing the effective Friedmann equation of LQC, by considering a generic f(R, P, Q) theory of gravity, where R=g^{mu nu }R_{mu nu } is the Ricci scalar, P=R_{mu nu }R^{mu nu }, and Q=R_{alpha beta mu nu }R^{alpha beta mu nu } is the Kretschmann scalar. An order reduction technique allows us to work in f(R, P, Q) theories which are perturbatively close to General Relativity, and to deduce a modified Friedmann equation in the reduced theory. Requiring that the modified Friedmann equation mimics the effective Friedmann equation of LQC, we are able to derive several functional forms of f(R, P, Q). We discuss the necessary conditions to obtain viable bouncing cosmologies for the proposed effective actions of f(R, P, Q) theory of gravity.

Notes on the post-bounce background dynamics in bouncing cosmologies

We investigate the post-bounce background dynamics in a certain class of single bounce scenarios studied in the literature, in which the cosmic bounce is driven by a scalar field with negative exponential potential such as the ekpyrotic potential. We show that those models can actually lead to cyclic evolutions with repeated bounces. These cyclic evolutions, however, do not account for the currently observed late-time accelerated expansion and hence are not cosmologically viable. In this respect we consider a new kind of cyclic model proposed recently and derive some cosmological constraints on this model.

Relativistic quantum bouncing particles in a homogeneous gravitational field

In this paper, we study the relativistic effect on the wave functions for a bouncing particle in a gravitational field. Motivated by the equivalence principle, we investigate the Klein–Gordon and Dirac equations in Rindler coordinates with the boundary conditions mimicking a uniformly accelerated mirror in Minkowski space. In the nonrelativistic limit, all these models in the comoving frame reduce to the familiar eigenvalue problem for the Schrödinger equation with a fixed floor in a linear gravitational potential, as expected. We find that the transition frequency between two energy levels of a bouncing Dirac particle is greater than the counterpart of a Klein–Gordon particle, while both are greater than their nonrelativistic limit. The different corrections to eigen-energies of particles of different nature are associated with the different behaviors of their wave functions around the mirror boundary.

Quantum Fluctuations in the Effective Relational GFT Cosmology

We analyze the size and evolution of quantum fluctuations of cosmologically relevant geometric observables, in the context of the effective relational cosmological dynamics of GFT models of quantum gravity. We consider the fluctuations of the matter clock observables, to test the validity of the relational evolution picture itself. Next, we compute quantum fluctuations of the universe volume and of other operators characterizing its evolution (number operator for the fundamental GFT quanta, effective Hamiltonian and scalar field momentum). In particular, we focus on the late (clock) time regime, where the dynamics is compatible with a flat FRW universe, and on the very early phase near the quantum bounce produced by the fundamental quantum gravity dynamics.

Noncommutative effective loop quantum cosmology: Inclusion of a potential term

We construct and study a simple noncommutative scheme (theta-deformation) for the effective Loop Quantum Cosmology of the flat Friedmann-Lema\^itre-Robertson-Walker model in the presence of a homogeneous scalar field $\phi$ with a potential $\mathcal{V}(\phi)=\frac{1}{2}m^2\phi^2$. We first conduct a simple analysis from the corresponding Hamilton equations of motion considering a generic term $\mathcal V(\phi)$. It is observed that the characteristic Big Bounce of Loop Quantum Cosmology is preserved under such noncommutative extension. When specializing to the quadratic case, numerical solutions to the corresponding Hamilton equations exhibiting an early inflationary epoch with a sufficiently large number of e-foldings are found. It is concluded that, in this noncommutative setup, solutions exist which are in the overall compatible with the early universe predicted by standard (effective) Loop Quantum Cosmology (i.e. a bouncing and inflationary early universe). The issue of the genericness of a sufficiently long inflationary period on the space of solutions in this noncommutative construct remains to be addressed.

Phenomenological Implications of Modified Loop Cosmologies: An Overview

In this paper, we first provide a brief review of the effective dynamics of two recently well-studied models of modified loop quantum cosmologies (mLQCs), which arise from different regularizations of the Hamiltonian constraint and show the robustness of a generic resolution of the big bang singularity, replaced by a quantum bounce due to non-perturbative Planck scale effects. As in loop quantum cosmology (LQC), in these modified models the slow-roll inflation happens generically. We consider the cosmological perturbations following the dressed and hybrid approaches and clarify some subtle issues regarding the ambiguity of the extension of the effective potential of the scalar perturbations across the quantum bounce, and the choice of initial conditions. Both of the modified regularizations yield primordial power spectra that are consistent with current observations for the Starobinsky potential within the framework of either the dressed or the hybrid approach. But differences in primordial power spectra are identified among the mLQCs and LQC. In addition, for mLQC-I, striking differences arise between the dressed and hybrid approaches in the infrared and oscillatory regimes. While the differences between the two modified models can be attributed to differences in the Planck scale physics, the permissible choices of the initial conditions and the differences between the two perturbation approaches have been reported for the first time. All these differences, due to either the different regularizations or the different perturbation approaches in principle can be observed in terms of non-Gaussianities.

Big bounce and future time singularity resolution in Bianchi I cosmologies: The projective invariant Nieh-Yan case

We extend the notion of the Nieh-Yan invariant to generic metric-affine geometries, where both torsion and nonmetricity are taken into account. Notably, we show that the properties of projective invariance and topologicity can be independently accommodated by a suitable choice of the parameters featuring this new Nieh-Yan term. We then consider a special class of modified theories of gravity able to promote the Immirzi parameter to a dynamical scalar field coupled to the Nieh-Yan form, and we discuss in more detail the dynamics of the effective scalar tensor theory stemming from such a revised theoretical framework. We focus, in particular, on cosmological Bianchi I models and we derive classical solutions where the initial singularity is safely removed in favor of a big bounce, which is ultimately driven by the nonminimal coupling with the Immirzi field. These solutions, moreover, turn out to be characterized by finite time singularities, but we show that such critical points do not spoil the geodesic completeness and wave regularity of these spacetimes.

Effective relational cosmological dynamics from quantum gravity

We discuss the relational strategy to solve the problem of time in quantum gravity and different ways in which it could be implemented, pointing out in particular the fundamentally new dimension that the problem takes in a quantum gravity context in which spacetime and geometry are understood as emergent. We realize concretely the relational strategy we have advocated in the context of the tensorial group field theory formalism for quantum gravity, leading to the extraction of an effective relational cosmological dynamics from quantum geometric models. We analyze in detail the emergent cosmological dynamics, highlighting the improvements over previous work, the contribution of the quantum properties of the relational clock to it, and the interplay between the conditions ensuring a bona fide relational dynamics throughout the cosmological evolution and the existence of a quantum bounce resolving the classical big bang singularity.

Dynamics of primordial fields in quantum cosmological spacetimes

Quantum cosmological models are commonly described by means of semiclassical approximations in which a smooth evolution of the expectation values of elementary geometry operators replaces the classical and singular dynamics. The advantage of such descriptions is that they are relatively simple and display the classical behavior for large universes. However, they may smooth out an important inner structure and to include it a more detailed treatment is needed. The purpose of the present work is to investigate quantum uncertainty in the basic background variables and its influence on primordial gravitational waves. To this end we quantize a model of the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker universe filled with a linear barotropic cosmological fluid and with gravitational waves. We carefully derive the dynamical equations for the perturbations in quantum spacetime. The quantization yields an equation of motion for the Fourier modes of gravitational radiation, which is a quantum extension to the usual parametric oscillator equation for gravitational waves propagating in an expanding universe. The two quantum effects from the cosmological background that enter the enhanced equation of motion are (i) a repulsive potential resolving the big bang singularity and replacing it with a big bounce and (ii) uncertainties in the numerical values for the background spacetime dynamical variables. First we study the former effect and its consequences for the primordial amplitude spectrum and carefully discuss the relation between the bounce scale and the physical predictions of the model. Next we investigate the latter effect, in particular the extent to which it may affect the primordial amplitude of gravitational waves. Making use of the WKB approximation we find an analytical formula for the amplitude spectrum as a function of the quantum dispersion of the background spacetime.

Bouncing Quantum Cosmology

The goal of this contribution is to present the properties of a class of quantum bouncing models in which the quantum bounce originates from the Dirac canonical quantization of a midi-superspace model composed of a homogeneous and isotropic background, together with small inhomogeneous perturbations. The resulting Wheeler-DeWitt equation is interpreted in the framework of the de Broglie-Bohm quantum theory, enormously simplifying the calculations, conceptually and technically. It is shown that the resulting models are stable and they never get to close to the Planck energy, where another more involved quantization scheme would have to be evoked, and they are compatible with present observations. Some physical effects around the bounce are discussed, like baryogenesis and magnetogenesis, and the crucial role of dark matter and dark energy is also studied.

Large scale anomalies in the CMB and non-Gaussianity in bouncing cosmologies

We propose that several of the anomalies that have been observed at large angular scales in the CMB have a common origin in a cosmic bounce that took place before the inflationary era. The bounce introduces a new physical scale in the problem, which breaks the almost scale invariance of inflation. As a result, the state of scalar perturbations at the onset of inflation is no longer the Bunch–Davies vacuum, but it rather contains excitations and non-Gaussianity, which are larger for infrared modes. We argue that the combined effect of these excitations and the correlations between CMB modes and longer wavelength perturbations, can account for the observed power suppression, for the dipolar asymmetry, and it can also produce a preference for odd-parity correlations. The model can also alleviate the tension in the lensing amplitude A L. We adopt a phenomenological viewpoint by considering a family of bounces characterized by a couple of parameters. We identify the minimum set of ingredients needed for our ideas to hold, and point out examples of theories in the literature where these conditions are met.

Anomalies in the CMB from a cosmic bounce

We explore a model of the early universe in which the inflationary epoch is preceded by a cosmic bounce, and argue that this scenario provides a common origin to several of the anomalous features that have been observed at large angular scales in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). More concretely, we show that a power suppression, a dipolar asymmetry, and a preference for odd-parity correlations, with amplitude and scale dependence in consonance with observations, are expected from this scenario. The model also alleviates the tension in the lensing amplitude. These signals originate from the indirect effect that non-Gaussian correlations between CMB modes and super-horizon wavelengths induce in the power spectrum. We follow a phenomenological approach, restricted to a family of bouncing models, and complement our analysis by pointing out to well established theories where our ideas are materialized.

On dark stars, galactic rotation curves and fast radio bursts

This paper is a continuation of our recent work on Radial Dark Matter stars (RDM-stars), black holes, coupled with radial flows of dark matter. As a galaxy model, it produces flat rotation curves, approximately valid for many galaxies far from the center. In this paper, more detailed modeling is carried out, including the vicinity of the galactic center. Assuming that the distribution of stellar black holes repeats the distribution of luminous matter, we get a perfect match between the model rotation curves and the observed ones. Further, using numerical integration, we examine the gravitational field of an individual RDM-star. The computation shows the event horizon being erased and rapidly increasing mass density arising instead (mass inflation). In this regime, we apply the previously constructed Planck star model, where at high densities a repulsive force occurs (quantum bounce). In our stationary model, the evolution of a Planck star has stopped under the pressure of dark matter flows. This system is considered as a possible source of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). In a scenario involving an asteroid falling onto an RDM-star, the model reproduces the correct frequency range of FRBs. Their total energy, coherence and short duration are explained as well.