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arxiv: gr-qc/0110012 · v2 · submitted 2001-10-01 · 🌀 gr-qc

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Inflationary spacetimes are not past-complete

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classification 🌀 gr-qc
keywords inflatingconditionenergyinflationarynullpastspacetimestimelike
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Many inflating spacetimes are likely to violate the weak energy condition, a key assumption of singularity theorems. Here we offer a simple kinematical argument, requiring no energy condition, that a cosmological model which is inflating -- or just expanding sufficiently fast -- must be incomplete in null and timelike past directions. Specifically, we obtain a bound on the integral of the Hubble parameter over a past-directed timelike or null geodesic. Thus inflationary models require physics other than inflation to describe the past boundary of the inflating region of spacetime.

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Cited by 4 Pith papers

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