Joint cosmology seminar at Tufts:

Tuesday, September 24, 2013, 2:30 pm
Robinson Hall, Room 250
Tufts University
Refreshments at 2:00 in Knipp Library, Room 251

Wave function of the Universe, Wheeler-DeWitt equation and inflation

Alexander Kamenshchik
University of Bologna

Abstract:

We study the Wheeler-DeWitt equation in the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, when the macroscopical geometrical degrees of freedom are treated semiclassically and other degrees of freedom are treated as quantum. A general equation, describing the lowest order corrections coming from quantum gravitational effects to the spectrum of cosmological scalar fluctuations is obtained. These corrections are explicitly estimated for the case of a de Sitter evolution.