Juan Maldacena – Institute for Advanced Study
Wednesday, July 17th, 10:45AM EDT
The no boundary wavefunction of the universe: a gentle review
One of the most interesting aspects of observational cosmology is the study of the primordial density fluctuations. The theory of inflation predicts that these fluctuations originate as quantum fluctuations during an inflationary period. The standard inflationary theory does not explain what happened before. The no boundary wavefunction of Hartle and Hawking is very elegant proposal for a more complete theory. Unfortunately, it seems to run into trouble with experiment. We will explain a version of this problem and possible resolutions.