Was There a Negative Vacuum Energy in Your Past?

Abstract

A model for gravitational collapse where the event horizon is a quantum critical phase transition is extended to provide an explanation for the origin of the observable universe, where the expanding universe that we observe today was proceeded by a flat universe with a negative cosmological constant. In principal this allows one derive all the features of our universe from a single parameter: the magnitude of the pre-big bang negative vacuum energy density. In this paper a simple model for the big bang is introduced which allows us to relate the present day energy density and temperature fluctuations of the CMB, to the present day density of dark matter. This model for the big bang also makes a dramatic prediction: dark matter mostly consists of compact objects with a masses on the order of 10 4 solar masses. Remarkably this is consistent with numerical simulations for how primordial fluctuations in the density of dark give rise to the observed inhomogeneous distribution of matter in our universe. Our model for the big bang also allows for the production of some compact objects with masses greater than 10 4 solar masses, which is consistent with numerical simulations of structure formation which require massive primordial comapact objects as the seeds for galaxies in order to explain galactic morphologies.One of the outstanding puzzles of modern theoretical physics is that classical general relativity offers no clue as the fate of massive steller cores undergoing gravitational collapse or the state of matter prior to the "big bang". These puzzles are all the more perplexing because In quantum mechanics it is not possible for matter to simple appear or disappear. Prevoiusly we have drawn attention [1,2] to the fact that the quantum critical phase transition theory of event horizons [3] provides a plausible explanation for the fate of matter undergoing gravitational collapse; namely, most of the mass-energy of the collapsing matter is converted into vacuum energy, resulting in the formation of a "dark energy star" [4]. Dark energy stars are distinguished from black holes in that their interiors resemble de Sitter's "interior" solution [5] rather than a black hole space-time. In this paper we offer a possible resolution of the enigma of what proceeded the big bang by noting that a flat Robertson-Walker universe with a negative cosmological constant will naturally evolve to an expanding inhomogeneous universe containing radiation and dark mattter via the same kind of quantum dynamics that resolves the problem of gravitational collapse. It was suggested some time ago by de Sitter, Eddington, and Lemaitre [6] that the observable universe may not have had a singular beginning, but instead may have originated from a finite size seed. Lemaitre suggested that this finite seed was a macroscopic quantum object which he called the "primeval atom". Cosmological models incorporating this idea make use of Lemaitre's examples of Robertson-Walker space-times with a positive cosmological constant [7,8]. In the following we describe...