International Journal of Modern Physics D Vol. 17, Nos.

3 & 4 (2008) 551555 c World Scientic Publishing Company

CHILD UNIVERSE UV REGULARIZATION?

E. I. GUENDELMAN Physics Department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel guendel@bgu.ac.il

Received 29 November 2007 Communicated by D. V. Ahluwalia-Khalilova It is argued that high energy density excitations, responsible for UV divergences in quantum eld theories, including quantum gravity, are likely to be the source of child universes which carry them out of the original spacetime. This decoupling prevents the high UV excitations from having any inuence on physical amplitudes. Child universe production could therefore be responsible for UV regularization in quantum eld theories which take into account gravitational eects. Finally, we discuss child universe production in the last stages of black hole evaporation, the prediction of the absence of trans-Planckian primordial perturbations, the connection with the minimum length hypothesis, and in particular the connection with the maximal curvature hypothesis. Keywords: Cosmology; quantum gravity; child universes; regularization of ultraviolet divergences. PACS Number(s): 04.60.-m, 04.70.-s, 11.27.+d

1. Introduction Quantum eld theory, and quantum gravity in particular, suer from UV divergences. While some quantum eld theories are of the renormalizable type, quantum gravity is not and the UV divergences cannot be hidden in a nite number of counterterms. Perturbative renormalizability does not appear to be available for quantum gravity. In an apparently unrelated development, the child universe solutions have been studied.a,b These child universes are regions of space that evolve in such a way that they disconnect from the ambient spacetime. Inationary bubbles of a false vacuum correspond to this denition.1,2 In this case an exponentially expanding
This

essay received an honorable mention in the 2007 Essay Competition of the Gravity Research Foundation. a See for example, Ref. 1. b For a review and more references, see Ref. 2. 551

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inationary bubble arises from an ambient spacetime with zero pressure which the false vacuum cannot displace. The inationary bubbles disconnect from the ambient space, generating a child universe. Here we want to explore the possibility that high energy density excitations, associated with the dangerous UV sector of quantum eld theory, are the source of child universes, which will carry the UV excitations out of the original ambient spacetime. Child universe production could be therefore responsible for UV softening in quantum eld theory that takes into account gravitational eects. It also implies the existence of a maximum energy density and curvature. We will now show, using a simple model, that very high UV excitations have an appreciable tendency to disconnect from the ambient spacetime. 2. The Superhigh UV Bubble We describe now the model which we will use to describe a high UV excitation which will be associated with the production of a child universe. This model for a high UV excitation consists of a bubble with very high surface tension and a very high value of bulk energy density inside the bubble. The entire spacetime region consists of two regions and a boundary: (1) Region I de Sitter space; (2) Region II Schwarzschild space and the domain wall boundary separating regions I and II. Region I: The line element is given by ds2 = (1 2 r2 )dt2 + (1 2 r2 )1 dr2 + r2 d2 , where is the Hubble constant, which is given by 2 = 8 G0 , 3
1 m2 P

(1)

(2) , where

0 being the vacuum energy density of the child universe and G = mP = 10 GeV. Region II: The Schwarzschild line element is given by ds2 = 1 2GM r dt2 + 1 2GM r
1 19

dr2 + r2 d2 .

(3)

The Einstein eld equations, 1 R g R = 8GT , 2 (4)

are satised in regions I and II and determine also the domain wall evolution,1 using the methods developed by Israel.3 Using Gaussian normal coordinates, which assign to any point in space three coordinates on the bubble, consider then a geodesic normal to the bubble which reaches any given point after a distance (the sign of

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depends upon which side of the bubble the point is found on). Then the energy momentum tensor T is given by T (x) = 0 g =0 ( < 0) for the child universe, Region I, (negative pressure),

( > 0) for the Schwarzschild region, Region II, for the domain wall boundary. (5)

= h ()

where is the surface tension and h is the metric tensor of the wall, i.e. h = g n n , with n being the normal to the wall. The equation of motion of the wall gives1
6 3 zm

Mcr =

1 2G

1 1 2 4 3 6 3 3(zm 1) 2

1 2

(6)

where Mcr is the mass at (or above) which there is classically a bubble that expands to innity into a disconnected space, the child universe. In the above equation = 1 = 2 8G 2 + 16 2 G2 2 ,
2

(7) 1 2 1 1 2 , 2

3 zm 2 r 3

1 8 + 1 2 2

+ where z 3 = 2GM and 2 = 2 + 2 , = 4G. rm is the location of the maximum + of the potential barrier that prevents bubbles with mass less than Mcr from turning into child universes. We expect this representation of a high UV excitation to be relevant even for a purely gravitational excitation, which can be associated, after an appropriate averaging procedure, with an eective energymomentum, a procedure that gets more and more accurate in the UV limit. Let us now focus our attention on the limit where (while 0 is xed), which we use as our rst model of a super UV excitation. We see that 2 and Mcr 0. Alternatively, we could obtain another model of a super UV excitation by considering the energy density inside the bubble, 0 , while keeping xed. This leads to Mcr 0 as well. Finally, letting both and 0 while keeping their ratio xed also leads to Mcr 0. In all these limits we also get the radius of the critical bubble rm 0. In Ref. 1 the above expression for Mcr was explored for a case where energy density scales (bulk and surface) were much smaller than the Planck scale, like the GUT scale. This gave a value for Mcr = 56 kg mP . Here we take the alternative view that the scale of the excitations is much higher than the Planck scale, giving now an arbitrarily small critical mass. Dening the scale of the excitation through mp 1 4 0 Mexc , the prefactor 2G in Eq. (6) goes like ( Mexc )2 mP . We see that for

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trans-Planckian excitations, i.e. if Mexc mP , we obtain a very big reduction for Mcr . This is a kind of seesaw mechanism, since the higher the Mexc , the smaller the Mcr . This means that in these models for high UV excitations there is no barrier to the high UV excitation being carried out to a disconnected space by the creation of a child universe. Notice also the interesting UVIR mixing that takes place here: although we go to very high UV limits in the sense that the energy density in the bulk or the surface energy density is very high, the overall critical mass goes to zero. We should note that these limits, where we take the surface tension or the energy density to very big values, can be achieved as we go to early times (corresponding to the time of the creation of the child universes) in models where these quantities are dynamical variables. In this context,4 when considering for example models with dynamical tension, one can show the existence of child universe production where the critical mass Mcr is indeed zero. 3. The Conjecture This allows us to formulate the conjecture that the dangerous UV excitations that are the source of the innities and the nonrenormalizability of quantum gravity are taken out of the original space by child universe production, i.e. the consideration of child universe production in the ultrahigh (trans-Planckian) sector of the theory could result in a nite quantum gravity, since the superhigh UV modes, after separating from the original space, will not be able to contribute anymore to physical processes. The hope is that in this way child universes could not only be of interest in cosmology but could also become an element essential for the consistency of quantum gravity. One situation where all the elements required (high energy densities, as the temperature is very big) are necessary for obtaining a child universe appears to be the late stages of black hole evaporation. If the ideas explained here are correct, we should not get contributions to primordial density perturbations from the trans-Planckian sector, since these perturbations would have disconnected from our space-time. Any attempt to measure distances smaller than the Planck length will, according to this, also be impossible since such a measurement will involve exciting a high UV excitation that will disconnect. This means that there must be a minimum length that we could measure, of the order of the Planck scale. It appears there is a maximal energy density according to this, since now bubbles with high energy density will be quickly disconnected, being replaced in the observable universe by regions of Schwarzschild space, which has zero energy density, i.e. a very big energy density must decay in the observable universe. The maximal curvature58 hypothesis (here we focus on scalar curvature) is justied by this maximal energy density result, if we use Eq. (4). An eective dynamics that takes into account the eect of child universe production (i.e. integrates out this eect)

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could resemble indeed that of Refs. 58. Notice that the maximal scalar curvature hypothesis gives rise to very interesting dynamics (see for e.g. Ref. 9). Acknowledgments I thank S. Ansoldi for many discussions, encouragement and collaboration on further developments related to the subject matter of this paper (discussed in Ref. 4). I also thank G. Nayak for some discussions and D. Easson for discussions related to Refs. 59. References
1. S. K. Blau, E. I. Guendelman and A. H. Guth, Phys. Rev. D 35 (1987) 1747. 2. S. Ansoldi and E. I. Guendelman, gr-qc/0611034. 3. W. Israel, Nuovo Cimento B 44, S10 (1966) 1 [Erratum, ibid B 48 (1967) 463; Nuovo Cimento B 44 (1966) 1]. 4. S. Ansoldi and E. I. Guendelman, gr-qc/0706.1233. 5. M. Markov, Pisma Zh. Eksp. Theor. Fiz. 36 (1982) 214. 6. M. Markov, Pisma Zh. Eksp. Theor. Fiz. 46 (1987) 342. 7. V. P. Frolov, M. A. Markov and V. F. Mukhanov, Phys. Rev. D 41 (1990) 383. 8. V. F. Mukhanov and R. Brandenberger, Phys. Rev. Lett. 68 (1992) 1969. 9. D. A. Easson, J. High Energy Phys. 0302 (2003) 037.