The size of our causal Universe

Enrique Gaztanaga*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

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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, theme asured 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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2766-2772
Number of pages7
JournalMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume494
Issue number2
Early online date15 Apr 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 May 2020

Keywords

  • cosmic background radiation
  • cosmological parameters
  • dark energy
  • early Universe
  • inflation

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