Standard Loop Quantum Cosmology Research Articles

Is a loopy and noncommutative early Universe viable?

We conduct a (pre-)inflationary dynamics study of the chaotic quadratic potential within the framework of a simple noncommutative extension of effective loop quantum cosmology put forward recently. It is concluded that, for typically small values of the noncommutativity parameter, the resulting (pre-)inflationary scenario is essentially indistinguishable from the one corresponding to standard loop quantum cosmology.

A diffeomorphism invariant family of metric-affine actions for loop cosmologies

In loop quantum cosmology (LQC) the big bang singularity is generically resolved by a big bounce. This feature holds even when modified quantization prescriptions of the Hamiltonian constraint are used such as in mLQC-I and mLQC-II. While the later describes an effective description qualitatively similar to that of standard LQC, the former describes an asymmetric evolution with an emergent Planckian de-Sitter pre-bounce phase even in the absence of a potential. We consider the potential relation of these canonically quantized non-singular models with effective actions based on a geometric description. We find a 3-parameter family of metric-affine f(ℛ) theories which accurately approximate the effective dynamics of LQC and mLQC-II in all regimes and mLQC-I in the post-bounce phase. Two of the parameters are fixed by enforcing equivalence at the bounce, and the background evolution of the relevant observables can be fitted with only one free parameter. It is seen that the non-perturbative effects of these loop cosmologies are universally encoded by a logarithmic correction that only depends on the bounce curvature of the model. In addition, we find that the best fit value of the free parameter can be very approximately written in terms of fundamental parameters of the underlying quantum description for the three models. The values of the best fits can be written in terms of the bounce density in a simple manner, and the values for each model are related to one another by a proportionality relation involving only the Barbero-Immirzi parameter.

Loop quantum cosmology and its gauge-covariant avatar: A weak curvature relationship

We explore the relationship between the effective dynamics in standard loop quantum cosmology (LQC) based on holonomies and triads obtained from gauge-fixing fluxes, and a modification of LQC based on holonomies and gauge-covariant fluxes (referred to as gLQC). Both the models yield singularity resolution via a bounce because of non-perturbative quantum geometric effects resulting in a maximum for energy density. In LQC, the bounce is extremely well captured by a $\rho^2$ term in energy density with a negative sign which emerges as a non-perturbative modification to the classical Friedmann and Raychaudhuri equations. But, details of such modifications in gLQC have remained hidden due to an arduous nature of gauge-covariant flux modifications which do not allow writing above equations in a closed form. To extract these modifications we explore the large volume, weak curvature limit for matter with a fixed equation of state and obtain higher order corrections to the classical theory. We find that in the weak curvature limit of gLQC, in the post-bounce branch, the first order correction beyond classical theory fully recovers the form of modified Friedmann and Raychaudhuri equations of LQC. In contrast, due to an asymmetric bounce in gLQC, the weak curvature limit of the pre-bounce branch exhibits a novel structure with a $\rho^{3/2}$ term as a first order correction beyond classical theory while the $\rho^2$ term appears as a second order correction. Our work shows that gLQC has a far richer structure which includes the form of dynamical equations with non-perturbative modifications in LQC in its weak curvature limit. This indicates that more general loop quantizations of cosmological sectors can reveal LQC at some truncation, and possibly there exist a tower of potentially interesting higher order modifications from quantum geometry which are hidden in the setting of LQC.

Loop quantum gravity effects might restrict a cyclic evolution

It is generally expected that in a non-singular cosmological model a cyclic evolution is straightforward to obtain on introduction of a suitable choice of a scalar field with a negative potential or a negative cosmological constant which causes a recollapse at some time in the evolution. We present a counter example to this conventional wisdom. Working in the realm of loop cosmological models with non-perturbative quantum gravity modifications we show that a modified version of standard loop quantum cosmology based on Thiemann's regularization of the Hamiltonian constraint while generically non-singular does not allow a cyclic evolution unless some highly restrictive conditions hold. Irrespective of the energy density of other matter fields, a recollapse and hence a cyclic evolution is only possible if one chooses an almost Planck sized negative potential of the scalar field or a negative cosmological constant. Further, cycles when present do not occur in the classical regime. Surprisingly, a necessary condition for a cyclic evolution, not singularity resolution, turns out to be a violation of the weak energy condition. These results are in a striking contrast to standard loop quantum cosmology where obtaining a recollapse at large volumes and a cyclic evolution is straightforward, and, there is no violation of weak energy condition. On one hand our work shows that some quantum cosmological models even though non-singular and bouncing are incompatible with a cyclic evolution, and on the other hand demonstrates that differences in various quantization prescriptions in loop cosmology need not be faint and buried in the pre-bounce regime, but can be striking and profound even in the post-bounce regime.

Nonsingular quantum gravitational dynamics of an Lemaître-Tolman-Bondi dust shell model: The role of quantization prescriptions

We study some consequences of the loop quantization of the outermost dust shell in the Lema\^{\i}tre-Tolman-Bondi spacetime with a homogeneous dust density using different quantization strategies motivated by loop quantum gravity. Prior work has dealt with loop quantizing this model by employing holonomies and the triads, following the procedure in standard loop quantum cosmology. In this work we compare this quantization with the one in which holonomies and gauge-covariant fluxes are used. While both of the quantization schemes resolve the central singularity, they lead to different mass gaps at which a trapped surface forms. This trapped surface which is matched to an exterior generalized Vaidya spacetime disappears when the density of the dust cloud is in the Planck regime. We find that the quantization based on holonomies and gauge-covariant fluxes generically results in an asymmetric evolution of the dust shell in which the Vaidya mass associated with the white hole as seen by an external observer is $2/\ensuremath{\pi}$ of the one for the black hole. This effective difference in masses results from difference in the classical limits in pre- and postbounce regimes in the two quantizations. This distinctive feature rules out formation of any black-hole-white-hole twins in presence of gauge-covariant flux modifications, which is in contrast to the quantization using holonomies and triads where the gravitational collapse always leads to black hole--white hole twins. Another striking difference lies in the fact that for the quantization based on holonomies and gauge-covariant fluxes there can be situations in which during a nonsingular collapse only a black hole forms without a white hole.

Primordial scalar power spectrum from the hybrid approach in loop cosmologies

We compare the primordial scalar power spectra in the loop cosmological models using the effective dynamics of the hybrid approach to cosmological perturbations in which the background is loop quantized, but the perturbations are Fock quantized. The three loop cosmological models under consideration are the standard loop quantum cosmology (LQC), the modified LQC-I (mLQC-I) and the modified LQC-II (mLQC-II) in the spatially flat Friedmann-Lema\^{\i}tre-Robertson-Walker universe with a Starobinsky potential. These models arise from different regularizations of the classical Hamiltonian constraint in the symmetry reduced spacetimes and aim to capture certain features of quantization in loop quantum gravity. When applying the techniques in the hybrid approach to mLQC-I/II, we find the effective Mukhanov-Sasaki equations take the same form as in LQC. The difference among the three models is encoded in the unique expressions of the effective masses in each model. We find that the relative difference in the amplitude of power spectrum between LQC and mLQC-II is approximately 50% in the infrared and the oscillatory regimes, whereas this difference can be as large as 100% between mLQC-I and LQC/mLQC-II. Interestingly, in the infrared and the oscillatory regimes of mLQC-I, we obtain a suppressed power spectrum from the hybrid approach which is far below the Planck scale. This result is in a striking contrast to the one obtained from the dressed metric approach to perturbations where the corresponding amplitude in this regime is extremely large. Our analysis shows that while the phenomenological predictions are in agreement between the two approaches for LQC and mLQC-II, for mLQC-I the differences between the dressed and hybrid approaches can be quite significant. Our result provides the first robust evidence of difference in predictions between the dressed and hybrid approaches due to respective underlying constructions.

Tachyon field in loop cosmology

The evolutionary pictures of tachyon field in modified loop cosmology have been investigated. We present the dynamical behavior of the tachyon field associated with an exponential potential and find that the pre-inflation dynamics are very similar in both modified loop cosmology and standard loop quantum cosmology. In addition, tachyonic inflation in modified loop cosmology models are discussed, and we find that the probability of inflation in modified loop cosmology is very closer to 1.

Renormalisation with SU(1, 1) coherent states on the LQC Hilbert space

We present an analytic computation of an explicit renormalisation group flow for cosmological states in loop quantum gravity. A key ingredient in our analysis are Perelomov coherent states for the Lie group SU(1, 1) whose representation spaces are embedded into the standard loop quantum cosmology (LQC) Hilbert space. The SU(1, 1) group structure enters our analysis by considering a classical set of phase space functions that generates the Lie algebra . We implement this Poisson algebra as operators on the LQC Hilbert space in a non-anomalous way. This task requires a rather involved ordering choice, whose existence is one of the main results of the paper. As a consequence, we can transfer recently established results on coarse graining cosmological states from direct quantisations of the above Poisson algebra to the standard LQC Hilbert space and full theory embeddings thereof. We explicitly discuss how the representation spaces used in this latter approach are embedded into the LQC Hilbert space and how the representation label sets a lower cut-off for the loop quantum gravity spins (=U(1) representation labels in LQC). Our results provide an explicit example of a non-trivial renormalisation group flow with a scale set by the representation label and interpreted as the minimally resolved geometric scale.

Primordial power spectrum from the dressed metric approach in loop cosmologies

We investigate the consequences of different regularizations and ambiguities in loop cosmological models on the predictions in the scalar and tensor primordial spectrum of the cosmic microwave background using the dressed metric approach. Three models, standard loop quantum cosmology (LQC), and two modified loop quantum cosmologies (mLQC-I and mLQC-II) arising from different regularizations of the Lorentzian term in the classical Hamiltonian constraint are explored for chaotic inflation in spatially flat Friedmann-Lema\^{\i}tre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) universe. In each model, two different treatments of the conjugate momentum of the scale factor are considered. The first one corresponds to the conventional treatment in dressed metric approach, and the second one is inspired from the hybrid approach which uses the effective Hamiltonian constraint. For these two choices, we find the power spectrum to be scale-invariant in the ultraviolet regime for all three models, but there is at least a 10% relative difference in amplitude in the infrared and intermediate regimes. All three models result in significant differences in the latter regimes. In mLQC-I, the magnitude of the power spectrum in the infra-red regime is of the order of Planck scale irrespective of the ambiguity in conjugate momentum of the scale factor. The relative difference in the amplitude of the power spectrum between LQC and mLQC-II can be as large as 50% throughout the infrared and intermediate regimes. Differences in amplitude due to regularizations and ambiguities turn out to be small in the ultraviolet regime.

Some physical implications of regularization ambiguities in SU(2) gauge-invariant loop quantum cosmology

The way physics of loop quantum gravity is affected by the underlying quantization ambiguities is an open question. We address this issue in the context of loop quantum cosmology using gauge-covariant fluxes. Consequences are explored for two choices of regularization parameters: ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{0}$ and $\overline{\ensuremath{\mu}}$ in the presence of a positive cosmological constant, and two choices of regularizations of the Hamiltonian constraint in loop quantum cosmology: the standard and the Thiemann regularization. We show that novel features of singularity resolution and bounce, occurring due to gauge-covariant fluxes, exist also for Thiemann-regularized dynamics. The ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{0}$ scheme is found to be unviable as in standard loop quantum cosmology when a positive cosmological constant is included. Our investigation brings out a surprising result that the nature of emergent matter in the prebounce regime is determined by the choice of regulator in the Thiemann regularization of the scalar constraint whether or not one uses gauge-covaraint fluxes. Unlike the $\overline{\ensuremath{\mu}}$ scheme where the emergent matter is a cosmological constant, the emergent matter in the ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{0}$ scheme behaves as a string gas.

Generic absence of strong singularities and geodesic completeness in modified loop quantum cosmologies

Different regularizations of the Hamiltonian constraint in loop quantum cosmology (LQC) yield modified loop quantum cosmologies, namely mLQC-I and mLQC-II, which lead to qualitatively different Planck scale physics. We perform a comprehensive analysis of resolution of various singularities in these modified loop cosmologies using effective spacetime description and compare with earlier results in standard LQC. We show that the volume remains non-zero and finite in finite time evolution for all considered loop cosmological models. Interestingly, even though expansion scalar and energy density are bounded due to quantum geometry, curvature invariants can still potentially diverge due to pressure singularities at a finite volume. These divergences are shown to be harmless since geodesic evolution does not break down and no strong singularities are present in the effective spacetimes of loop cosmologies. Using a phenomenological matter model, various types of exotic strong and weak singularities, including big rip, sudden, big freeze and type-IV singularities, are studied. We show that as in standard LQC, big rip and big freeze singularities are resolved in mLQC-I and mLQC-II, but quantum geometric effects do not resolve sudden and type-IV singularities.

Von Neumann stability of modified loop quantum cosmologies

von Neumann stability analysis of quantum difference equations in loop quantized spacetimes has often proved useful to understand the viability of quantizations and whether a general relativistic description is recovered at small spacetime curvatures. We use this technique to analyze the infra-red behavior of the quantum Hamiltonian constraint in recently explored modifications of loop quantum cosmology: mLQC-I and mLQC-II, for the spatially flat FLRW model. We investigate the behavior for the scheme, where the minimum area of loops in the quantization procedure does not take physical metric in to account, and the scheme where quantization procedure uses a physical metric. The fate of stability of quantum difference equations is tested for massless scalar field as well as with inclusion of a positive cosmological constant. We show that for mLQC-I and mLQC-II, the difference equation fails to be von Neumann stable for the scheme if a cosmological constant is included signaling problematic behavior at large volumes. Both of the modified loop quantum cosmologies are von Neumann stable for the scheme. In contrast to standard loop quantum cosmology, properties of roots turn out to be richer and intricate. Our results demonstrate the robustness of the scheme (or ‘improved dynamics’) in loop quantization of cosmological spacetimes even when non-trivial quantization ambiguities of the Hamiltonian are considered, and show that the scheme is non-viable in this setting.

Martín-Benito–Mena Marugán–Olmedo prescription for the Dapor-Liegener model of loop quantum cosmology

Recently, an alternative Hamiltonian constraint for Loop Quantum Cosmology has been put forward by Dapor and Liegener, inspired by previous work on regularization due to Thiemann. Here, we quantize this Hamiltonian following a prescription for cosmology proposed by Mart\'{\i}n-Benito, Mena Marug\'an, and Olmedo. To this effect, we first regularize the Euclidean and Lorentzian parts of the Hamiltonian constraint separately in the case of a Bianchi I cosmology. This allows us to identify a natural symmetrization of the Hamiltonian which is apparent in anisotropic scenarios. Preserving this symmetrization in isotropic regimes, we then determine the Hamiltonian constraint corresponding to a Friedmann-Lema\^itre-Robertson-Walker cosmology, which we proceed to quantize. We compute the action of this Hamiltonian operator in the volume eigenbasis and show that it takes the form of a fourth-order difference equation, unlike in standard Loop Quantum Cosmology, where it is known to be of second order. We investigate the superselection sectors of our constraint operator, proving that they are semilattices supported only on either the positive or the negative semiaxis, depending on the triad orientation. Remarkably, the decoupling between semiaxes allows us to write a closed expression for the generalized eigenfunctions of the geometric part of the constraint. This expression is totally determined by the values at the two points of the semilattice that are closest to the origin, namely the two contributions with smallest eigenvolume. This is in clear contrast with the situation found for the standard Hamiltonian of Loop Quantum Cosmology, where only the smallest value is free. This result indicates that the degeneracy of the new geometric Hamiltonian operator is equal to two, doubling the possible number of solutions with respect to the conventional quantization considered until now.

Noncommutativity in Effective Loop Quantum Cosmology

We construct a noncommutative extension of the Loop Quantum Cosmology effective scheme for the flat FLRW model with a free scalar field via a theta deformation. Firstly, a deformation is implemented in the configuration sector, among the holonomy variable and the matter degree of freedom. We show that this type of noncommutativity retains, to some degree, key features of the Loop Quantum Cosmology paradigm for a free field. Secondly, a deformation is implemented in the momentum sector, among the momentum associated with the holonomy variable and the momentum associated with the matter field. We show that in this latter case the scalar field energy density is the same as the one in standard Loop Quantum Cosmology.

The Dapor\u2013Liegener model of loop quantum cosmology: a dynamical analysis

The Dapor–Liegener model of loop quantum cosmology (LQC), which depicts an emergent universe from a de Sitter regime in the contracting phase is studied from the mathematical viewpoint of dynamical systems and compared with the standard model of LQC. Dealing with perturbations, on the contrary to standard LQC where at early times all the scales are inside the Hubble radius, we show that it is impossible to implement the matter bounce scenario due to the fact that an emergent de Sitter regime in the contracting phase implies that all the scales are outside of the Hubble radius in a past epoch.

Qualitative dynamics and inflationary attractors in loop cosmology

Qualitative dynamics of three different loop quantizations of spatially flat isotropic and homogeneous models is studied using effective spacetime description of the underlying quantum geometry. These include the standard loop quantum cosmology (LQC), its recently revived modification (referred to as mLQC-I), and another related modification of LQC (mLQC-II) whose dynamics is studied in detail for the first time. Various features of LQC, including quantum bounce and pre-inflationary dynamics, are found to be shared with the mLQC-I and mLQC-II models. We study universal properties of dynamics for chaotic inflation, fractional monodromy inflation, Starobinsky potential, non-minimal Higgs inflation, and an exponential potential. We find various critical points and study their stability, which reveal various qualitative similarities in the post-bounce phase for all these models. The pre-bounce qualitative dynamics of LQC and mLQC-II turns out to be very similar, but is strikingly different from that of mLQC-I. In the dynamical analysis, some of the fixed points turn out to be degenerate for which center manifold theory is used. For all these potentials, non-perturbative quantum gravitational effects always result in a non-singular inflationary scenario with a phase of super-inflation succeeded by the conventional inflation. We show the existence of inflationary attractors, and obtain scaling solutions in the case of the exponential potential. Since all of the models agree with general relativity at late times, our results are also of use in classical theory where qualitative dynamics of some of the potentials has not been studied earlier.

Cosmological perturbations in a class of fully covariant modified theories: application to models with the same background as standard LQC

Bouncing cosmologies are obtained by adding to the Einstein–Hilbert action a term of the form sqrt{-,g}f(chi ), with chi a scalar depending on the Hubble parameter only, not on its derivatives, and which is here shown to arise from the divergence of the unitary time-like eigenvector of the stress tensor. At background level, the dynamical equations for a given f-theory are calculated, showing that the simplest bouncing cosmology resulting leads to exactly the same equations as those for holonomy corrected Loop Quantum Cosmology (LQC). When dealing with perturbations, the equation for tensor ones is the same as in General Relativity (GR); for scalar perturbations, when one uses the f-theory which leads to the same background as the standard version of holonomy corrected LQC, one obtains similar equations (although a bit more elaborated) as those coming from LQC in the so-called deformed algebra approach.

Towards cosmological dynamics from loop quantum gravity

We present a systematic study of the cosmological dynamics resulting from an effective Hamiltonian, recently derived in loop quantum gravity using Thiemann's regularization and earlier obtained in loop quantum cosmology (LQC) by keeping the Lorentzian term explicit in the Hamiltonian constraint. We show that quantum geometric effects result in higher than quadratic corrections in energy density in comparison to LQC causing a non-singular bounce. Dynamics can be described by the Hamilton's or the Friedmann-Raychaudhuri equations, but the map between the two descriptions is not one-to-one. A careful analysis resolves the tension on symmetric versus asymmetric bounce in this model, showing that the bounce must be asymmetric and symmetric bounce is physically inconsistent, in contrast to the standard LQC. In addition, the current observations only allow a scenario where the pre-bounce branch is asymptotically de Sitter, similar to a quantization of the Schwarzschild interior in LQC, and the post-bounce branch yields the classical general relativity. For a quadratic potential, we find that a slow-roll inflation generically happens after the bounce, which is quite similar to what happens in LQC.

Gravity's rainbow: A bridge between LQC and DSR

The doubly special relativity (DSR) theories are investigated in order to take into account an observer-independent length scale in special relativity framework. It is widely believed that any quantum theory of gravity would reduce to a DSR model at the flat limit when purely gravitational and quantum mechanical effects are negligible. Gravity's rainbow is a simple generalization of DSR theories to incorporate gravity. In this paper, we show that the effective Friedmann equations that are suggested by loop quantum cosmology (LQC) can be exactly reobtained in rainbow cosmology setup. The deformed geometry of LQC then completely fixes the modified dispersion relation and results in unique DSR model. In comparison with standard LQC scenario where only the geometry is modified, both of the geometry and matter parts get modifications in our setup. In this respect, we find that the total number of microstates for the universe is finite which suggests the statistical origin for the energy and entropy density bounds. These results explicitly show that the DSR theories are appropriate candidates for the flat limit of loop quantum gravity.

Loop quantum cosmology with self-dual variables

Using the complex-valued self-dual connection variables, the loop quantum cosmology of a closed Friedmann universe coupled to a massless scalar field is studied. It is shown how the reality conditions can be imposed in the quantum theory by choosing a particular inner product for the kinematical Hilbert space. While holonomies of the self-dual Ashtekar connection are not well-defined in the kinematical Hilbert space, it is possible to introduce a family of generalized holonomy-like operators of which some are well-defined; these operators in turn are used in the definition of the Hamiltonian constraint operator where the scalar field can be used as a relational clock. The resulting quantum theory is closely related, although not identical, to standard loop quantum cosmology constructed from the Ashtekar-Barbero variables with a real Immirzi parameter. Effective Friedmann equations are derived, which provide a good approximation to the full quantum dynamics for sharply-peaked states whose volume remains much larger than the Planck volume, and they show that for these states quantum gravity effects resolve the big-bang and big-crunch singularities and replace them by a non-singular bounce. Finally, the loop quantization in self-dual variables of a flat Friedmann space-time is recovered in the limit of zero spatial curvature and is identical to the standard loop quantization in terms of the real-valued Ashtekar-Barbero variables.