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Spontaneous Inflation and the Origin of the Arrow of Time

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arxiv hep-th/0410270 v1 pith:VTJCZYRE submitted 2004-10-27 hep-th astro-phgr-qc

Sean M. Carroll , Jennifer Chen This is my paper · ORCID
classification hep-thastro-phgr-qc
keywords inflationspontaneoustimevacuumarrowasymptoticallyenergynatural
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We suggest that spontaneous eternal inflation can provide a natural explanation for the thermodynamic arrow of time, and discuss the underlying assumptions and consequences of this view. In the absence of inflation, we argue that systems coupled to gravity usually evolve asymptotically to the vacuum, which is the only natural state in a thermodynamic sense. In the presence of a small positive vacuum energy and an appropriate inflaton field, the de Sitter vacuum is unstable to the spontaneous onset of inflation at a higher energy scale. Starting from de Sitter, inflation can increase the total entropy of the universe without bound, creating universes similar to ours in the process. An important consequence of this picture is that inflation occurs asymptotically both forwards and backwards in time, implying a universe that is (statistically) time-symmetric on ultra-large scales.

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Cited by 3 Pith papers

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    In a special scale-invariant fracton Hamiltonian, late-time attractors reproduce the scale expansion, homogeneity, critical Newtonian dynamics, and arrow of time of a flat matter-dominated cosmology.

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    quant-ph 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0 of 10

    Quantum Boltzmann Bridges recover classical two-time entropy conditioning when hidden microstate dimension grows large enough to suppress coherent revivals, while pure qubit models remain revival-dominated.

  3. Toward a Phenomenologically Acceptable Quantum Cyclic Universe

    gr-qc 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 4.0 of 10

    A finite-dimensional quantum model with commensurable energy eigenvalues and minimum-entropy initial condition yields exact periodicity and a distinguished entropy minimum that may represent the Big Bang while suppres...

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