Skip to main content
We gratefully acknowledge support from the Simons Foundation, member institutions, and all contributors. Donate
arXiv logo
Cornell University Logo

High Energy Physics - Theory

arXiv:1805.09852 (hep-th)
[Submitted on 24 May 2018]

Title:Can the universe be described by a wavefunction?

Authors:Samir D. Mathur
View PDF
Abstract:Suppose we assume that in gently curved spacetime (a) causality is not violated to leading order (b) the Birkoff theorem holds to leading order and (c) CPT invariance holds. Then we argue that the `mostly empty' universe we observe around us cannot be described by an exact wavefunction $\Psi$. Rather, the weakly coupled particles we see are approximate quasiparticles arising as excitations of a `fuzz'. The `fuzz' {\it does} have an exact wavefunction $\Psi_{fuzz}$, but this exact wavefunction does not directly describe local particles. The argument proceeds by relating the cosmological setting to the black hole information paradox, and then using the small corrections theorem to show the impossibility of an exact wavefunction describing the visible universe.
Comments: 8 pages, 6 figures, Essay awarded an honorable mention in the Gravity Research Foundation 2018 Awards for Essays on Gravitation
Subjects: High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th); General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc)
Cite as: arXiv:1805.09852 [hep-th]
  (or arXiv:1805.09852v1 [hep-th] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1805.09852
Related DOI: https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218271818470041

Submission history

From: Samir Mathur [view email]
[v1] Thu, 24 May 2018 18:56:16 UTC (124 KB)
Full-text links:

Access Paper:

view license
Current browse context:
hep-th
< prev   |   next >
new | recent | 2018-05
Change to browse by:
gr-qc

References & Citations

export BibTeX citation

Bookmark

BibSonomy logo Reddit logo

Bibliographic and Citation Tools

Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)
Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)
Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)
scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)

Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article

alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)
CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)
DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)
Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)
Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)
Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?)
ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)

Demos

Replicate (What is Replicate?)
Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)
TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)

Recommenders and Search Tools

Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)
CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)
IArxiv Recommender (What is IArxiv?)

arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)