I review the "Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture" (TCC) and its implications for cosmology, in particular for the inflationary universe scenario. Whereas the inflationary scenario is tightly constrained by the TCC, alternative early universe scenarios are not restricted.
The implications of the recently proposed Trans-Planckian censorship conjecture (TCC) are analyzed in the context of warm inflation. It is found that for a single-stage accelerated expansion the constraints imposed by the censorship are roughly the same as for cold inflation. Next, we study how a two-stage inflationary expansion with an intermediate radiation-dominated era can alleviate the bounds imposed by the censorship. For a demonstrative toy model we found $r<10^{-23}$, but can be $r<10^{-5}$ for a weaker form of TCC for the later stages of expansion, while still satisfying the other swa…
We study the implications of the recently proposed Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC) for early universe cosmology and in particular inflationary cosmology. The TCC leads to the conclusion that if we want inflationary cosmology to provide a successful scenario for cosmological structure formation, the energy scale of inflation has to be lower than $10^9$ GeV. Demanding the correct amplitude of the cosmological perturbations then forces the generalized slow-roll parameter $ε$ of the model to be very small ($<10^{-31}$). This leads to the prediction of a negligible amplitude of primordi…
We consider thermal, trapped and chromo-natural inflation in light of the swampland criteria and the Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC). Since thermal inflation occurs at energies low compared to those of Grand Unification, it is consistent with the TCC, and it is also consistent with the refined swampland conditions. Trapped and chromo-natural inflation are candidates for primordial (high energy scale) inflation. Since in both of these scenarios there are effective damping terms in the scalar field equation of motion, the models can easily be consistent with the swampland criteria. T…
In this short note, we pointed out that Warm inflationary scenario remains to be favoured over its cold counterpart by the recently proposed conjectures, which aim to overrule de Sitter like constructions in String Landscapes. On the other hand, the canonical cold (single-field slow-roll) inflationary models, which were in tension with the previously proposed de Sitter conjecture, have now become even more unlikely to realise in String Landscapes as these scenarios fail to cope up with both the conjectures, de Sitter and trans-Planckian censorship, at one go.
We discuss the de Sitter swampland and trans-Planckian censorship conjectures (TCC) from the entropy bound with quantum corrections, namely quantum version of Bousso bound and energy conditions. We include the typical contributions from the entanglement entropy in quasi-de Sitter spacetime. The TCC is not much corrected, whereas the bounds on de Sitter swampland conjecture from energy conditions can be relaxed due to quantum corrections.
During an accelerated expansion of the Universe, quantum fluctuations of sub-Planckian size can be stretched outside the horizon and be regarded effectively classical. Recently, it has been conjectured that such horizon-crossing of trans-Planckian modes never happens inside theories of quantum gravity (the trans-Planckian censorship conjecture, TCC). We point out several conceptual problems of this conjecture, which is in itself formulated as a statement on the restriction of possible scenarios in a theory: by contrast a standard swampland conjecture is a restriction of possible theories in th…
We investigate the implication of Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC) for the initial state of primordial perturbations. It is possible to set the state of perturbation modes in the infinite past as the Minkowski vacuum, only if the pre-inflationary era is past-complete. We calculate the evolution of the perturbation modes in such a pre-inflationary era and show that at the beginning of inflation the perturbation modes with wavelengths much shorter than the Hubble scale (but still larger than the Planck length scale) will behave as they are in the Bunch-Davis state. Therefore, a past-c…
The trans-Planckian censorship conjecture implies that single-field models of inflation require an extreme fine-tuning of the initial conditions due to the very low-scale of inflation. In this work, we show how a quantum cosmological proposal -- namely the tunneling wavefunction -- naturally provides the necessary initial conditions without requiring such fine-tunings. More generally, we show how the tunneling wavefunction can provide suitable initial conditions for hilltop inflation models, the latter being typically preferred by the swampland constraints.
We propose a refined version of trans-Planckian censorship conjecture (TCC), which could be elaborated from the strong scalar weak gravity conjecture combined with some entropy bounds. In particular, no fine-tuning on the inflation model-building is required in the refined TCC, and it automatically passes the tests from those stringy examples that support the original TCC. Furthermore, our refined TCC could be consistent with hilltop eternal inflation.
Motivated by the recently proposed Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC), we propose a gauged $B-L$ model of inflection-point inflation with axion dark matter. The Hubble scale during inflation ($H_{\rm inf}$) satisfies the TCC bound of $H_{\rm inf} \lesssim 1$ GeV, the axion dark matter scenario is free from the axion domain wall and isocurvature problems, and the axion decay constant can be larger than $10^{12}$ GeV. The seesaw mechanism is automatically incorporated in the model and the observed baryon asymmetry of the universe can be reproduced via resonant leptogenesis.
The recently proposed trans-Planckian censorship conjecture (TCC) seems to require that the energy scale of inflation is significantly lower than the Planck scale $(H_\text{inf}<10^{-20} \Mpl)$. This, in turn, implies that the tensor-to-scalar ratio for inflation is negligibly small, \textit{independent} of assumptions of slow-roll or even of having a single scalar field, thus ruling out inflation if primordial tensor modes are ever observed. After demonstrating the robustness and generality of these bounds, we show that having an excited initial state for cosmological perturbations seems to b…
It was recently proposed that a field theory cannot be consistent with quantum gravity if it allows a mode shorter than the Planck length to exit the Hubble horizon. This is called the Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC). We discuss the implications of the TCC on the possible shape of the inflaton potential in single-field slow-roll inflation. We point out that (1) there is generically an initial condition in which the total e-folding number $N_\text{total}$ is doubled or more compared to the e-folds necessary for the cosmic microwave background fluctuations, and (2) a sizable negative…
We explore the bound of the trans-Planckian censorship conjecture on an inflation model with multiple stages. We show that if the first inflationary stage is responsible for the primordial perturbations in the cosmic microwave background window, the $e$-folding number of each subsequent stage will be bounded by the energy scale of the first stage. This seems to imply that the lifetime of the current era of accelerated expansion (regarded as one of the multiple inflationary stages) might be a probe for distinguishing inflation from its alternatives. We also present a multistage inflation model …
Starting from the swampland distance conjecture, and using the species bound for a large number of weakly-coupled particles, we give a derivation of the recently proposed trans-Planckian censorship conjecture. Our argument demonstrates how a quantum gravity principle requires that trans-Planckian quantum fluctuations should never cross the Hubble horizon. We also comment on how logarithmic corrections to the de-Sitter conjecture arise naturally from such an approach when one relaxes the requirement of traversing parametrically large distances on field space.
In this Letter, we consider the model-independent reconstruction of the expansion and growth functions from the Pantheon supernova data. The method relies on developing the expansion function in terms of shifted Chebyshev polynomials and determining the coefficients of the polynomials by a maximum-likelihood fit to the data. Having obtained the expansion function in a model-independent way, we can then also determine the growth function without assuming a particular model. We then compare the results with the predictions of two classes of Dark Energy models, firstly a class of quintessence sca…
We investigate the Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC) and the arising bounds on the inflationary cosmology caused by that conjecture. In that investigation, we analyze TCC bounds for both Jordan and Einstein frames in the presence of a generic non-minimal coupling (to gravity) term. That term allows us to use the functional freedom it brings to the inflationary Lagrangian as an effective Planck mass. In this sense, we argue one should consider the initial field value of the effective Planck mass for the TCC. We show that as a result, one can remove the TCC upper bounds without the nee…
We study the constraint on the inflationary energy scale from the recently proposed Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC). We find a universal upper bound on the inflationary Hubble expansion rate $H_\text{inf}$ which is solely determined by the reheating temperature $T_\text{rh}$: $H_\text{inf}/M_\text{Pl}\lesssim T_0/T_\text{rh}$, where $T_0$ is the photon temperature today. The upper limit can be saturated by a post-inflationary oscillatory stage with the critical equation-of-state parameter $w\approx-1/3$, or by an inflation model with multiple stages. In the lowest reheating tempera…
In this paper, we discuss about the possibility to enhance the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ under the condition of Trans-Planckian censorship conjecture (TCC), thus $r\sim O(10^{-3})$ could be observable within the sensitivity of future experiments. We make use of the scalar-tensor theory where inflaton is nonminimally coupled to gravity. After demonstrating that the TCC condition could be modified in scalar-tensor theory, we show that due to the effects of modified gravity at the end of inflation, a large $r\sim O(10^{-3})$ could be allowed without violating the TCC. Moreover, the modification …
The constraint of trans-Planckian censorship conjecture on brane inflation model is considered. The conjectures put an upper bound on the main parameter including temperature, inflation time, potential, and the tensor-to-scalar ratio parameter $r$. It is determined that the resulting constraint could be more stronger than what we have for the standard inflationary models. The constraint in general depends on the brane tension and it is concluded that the conjecture also confined the value of brane tension in order to have consistency for the model. Confining the brane tension turns into a dete…
In this paper we put forward the idea that the comoving Hubble horizon undergoes multiple stages of contraction (a.k.a. inflationary phase) and expansion. The observable inflation, that produces the CMB anisotropies and generates primordial gravitational waves, follows and is followed by multiple early and late inflations. The trans-Planckian censorship conjecture restricts the duration of each inflationary phases and determines their Hubble rates. Early inflations could start immediately after the universe emerges from the Planck era. It alleviates the initial condition problem for the lower-…
The recently proposed Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC) can be used to constrain the energy scale of inflation. The conclusions however depend on the assumptions about post-inflationary history of the Universe. E.g. in the standard case of a thermal post-inflationary history in which the Universe stays radiation dominated at all times from the end of inflation to the epoch of radiation matter equality, TCC has been used to argue that the Hubble parameter during inflation, $H_{\inf}$, is below ${\cal O}(0.1) ~{\rm GeV}$. Cosmological scenarios with a non-thermal post-inflationary hist…
The recently proposed trans-Planckian censorship conjecture (TCC) imposes a strong constraint on the inflationary Hubble scale, of which the upper bound could be largely relaxed by considering a noninstantaneous reheating history. In this paper we will show that, if the primordial black holes (PBHs) are formed at reentry in the radiation-dominated era from the enhanced curvature perturbations at small scales, the TCC would impose a lower bound on the PBH mass $M_\mathrm{PBH}>γ(H_\mathrm{end}/10^9\,\mathrm{GeV})^2\,M_\odot$ regardless of the details for reheating history, where $γ$ is the colla…
The recently proposed trans-Planckian censorship conjecture (TCC) amounts to the claim that inflation models with an inflationary energy scale larger than Lambda_inf^max ~ 10^9 GeV belong to the swampland, i.e., cannot be embedded into a consistent theory of quantum gravity. In this paper, we point out that this constraint can be readily satisfied in D-term hybrid inflation (DHI), which is a well-motivated inflation scenario in the context of supersymmetric grand unification. In DHI, the amplitude of the primordial scalar power spectrum originates from a Fayet-Iliopoulos term of the order of t…
The trans-Planckian censorship conjecture (TCC) puts an upper bound on the life-time of de Sitter spacetimes. It has immediate consequences for inflationary cosmology. In the standard paradigm, the universe has experienced a single stage of inflation and follows a thermal history. Then, the TCC puts an upper bound on the Hubble parameter during inflation $H_{\rm inf}$ around $0.1$ GeV. Consequently, it implies a severe fine-tuning in initial condition for inflation and non-detection of primordial gravitational waves. In this note, we study non-standard cosmological paradigms with non-thermal h…
A classical solution where the (scalar) field value moves by an ${\cal O}(1)$ range in Planck units is believed to signal the breakdown of Effective Field Theory (EFT). One heuristic argument for this is that such a field will have enough energy to be inside its own Schwarzschild radius, and will result in collapse. In this paper, we consider an inverse problem: what kind of field ranges arise during the gravitational collapse of a classical field? Despite the fact that collapse has been studied for almost a hundred years, most of the discussion is phrased in terms of fluid stress tensors, and…
We show that the constraints which follow from the {\it Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture} for inflationary cosmology can be strengthened if the pre-inflationary universe was dominated by radiation. The resulting upper bound on the energy scale of inflation is $η\sim 10^4 {\rm GeV}$, close to the scale accessible to accelerator experiments.
Motivated by the old trans-Planckian (TP) problem of inflationary cosmology, it has been conjectured that any consistent effective field theory should keep TP modes `hidden' behind the Hubble horizon, so as to prevent them from turning classical and thereby affecting macroscopic observations. In this paper we present two arguments against the Hubble horizon being a scale of singular significance as has been put forward in the TP Censorship Conjecture (TCC). First, refinements of TCC are presented that allow for the TP modes to grow beyond the horizon while still keeping the de-Sitter conjectur…
It is remarkable that the primordial fluctuations as revealed by the CMB coincide with what quantum fluctuations would look like if they were stretched across the sky by accelerated cosmic expansion. It has been observed that this same stretching also brings very small -- even trans-Planckian -- length scales up to observable sizes if extrapolated far enough into the past. This potentially jeopardizes later descriptions of late-time cosmology by introducing uncontrolled trans-Planckian theoretical errors into all calculations. Recent speculations, such as the Trans-Planckian Censorship Conject…
It is challenging to construct explicit and controllable models that realize de Sitter solutions in string compactifications. This difficulty is the main motivation for the Refined de Sitter Conjecture and the Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture which forbid stable de Sitter solutions but allow metastable, unstable and rolling solutions in a theory consistent with quantum gravity. Inspired by this, we first study a toy de Sitter No-Scale Supergravity model and show that for particular choices of parameters it can be consistent with the Refined de Sitter Conjecture and the Trans-Planckian Cen…
We argue that under certain assumptions the quantum break time approach and the trans-Planckian censorship conjecture both lead to de Sitter swampland constraints of the same functional form. It is a well known fact that the quantum energy-momentum tensor in the Bunch-Davies vacuum computed in the static patch of dS breaks some of the isometries. Proposing that this is a manifestation of quantum breaking of dS, we analyze some of its consequences. In particular, this leads to a thermal matter component that can be generalized to string theory in an obvious way. Imposing a censorship of quantum…
The accelerated expansion of space during the period of cosmological inflation leads to trans-Planckian issues which need to be addressed. Most importantly, the physical wavelength of fluctuations which are studied at the present time by means of cosmological observations may well originate with a wavelength smaller than the Planck length at the beginning of the inflationary phase. Thus, questions arise as to whether the usual predictions of inflationary cosmology are robust considering our ignorance of physics on trans-Planckian scales, and whether the imprints of Planck-scale physics are at …
We revisit the cosmological dynamics of the cubic Galileon model in light of the recently proposed model-independent analyses of the Pantheon supernova data. At the background level, it is shown to be compatible with data and preferred over standard quintessence models. Furthermore, the model is shown to be consistent with the trans-Planckian censorship conjecture (as well as other Swampland conjectures). It is shown that for the given parametrization, the model fails to satisfy the bounds on the reconstructed growth index derived from the Pantheon data set at the level of linear~perturbations…
We study the proposal by Mersini et al. that the observed dark energy might be explained by the back-reaction of the set of tail modes in a theory with a dispersion relation in which the mode frequency decays exponentially in the trans-Planckian regime. The matter tail modes are frozen out, however they induce metric fluctuations. The energy-momentum tensor with which the tail modes effect the background geometry obtains contributions from both metric and matter fluctuations. We calculate the equation of state induced by the tail modes taking into account the gravitational contribution. We fin…
We calculate the spectrum of the relic gravitational wave due to the trans-Planckian effect in which the standard linear dispersion relations may be modified. Of the modified dispersion relations suggested in literatures which have investigated the trans-Planckian effect, we especially use the Corley-Jacobson dispersion relations. The Corley-Jacobson type modified dispersion relations can be obtained from Hořava-Lifshitz gravity which is non-relativistic and UV complete. Although it is not clear how the transitions from Hořava-Lifshitz gravity in the UV regime to Einstein gravity in the IR lim…
In minisuperspace quantum cosmology, the Lorentzian path integral formulations of the no-boundary and tunneling proposals have recently been analyzed. But it has been pointed out that the wave function of linearized perturbations around a homogeneous and isotropic background is of an inverse Gaussian form and thus that their correlation functions are divergent. In this paper, we revisit this issue and consider the problem of perturbations in Lorentzian quantum cosmology by modifying the dispersion relation based on trans-Planckian physics. We consider two modified dispersion relations, the gen…
We study the field theoretical description of a generic theory of gravity flowing to Einstein General Relativity in IR. We prove that, if ghost-free, in the weakly coupled regime such a theory can never become weaker than General Relativity. Using this fact, as a byproduct, we suggest that in a ghost-free theory of gravity trans-Planckian propagating quantum degrees of freedom cannot exist. The only physical meaning of a trans-Planckian pole is the one of a classical state (Black Hole) which is described by the light IR quantum degrees of freedom and gives exponentially-suppressed contribution…
In the present paper we discuss how trans-Planckian physics affects inflationary vacuum fluctuations and primordial density perturbations. The trans-Planckian problem during inflation has been widely discussed in literature, but it is still under debate. We reconsider this problem by using the two-point correlation function of the non-minimally coupled scalar fields and constructing the effective potential with the adiabatic (WKB) regularization or approximation. First, we clearly show that the cut-off divergence of the quantum fluctuations does not drastically change during inflation under re…
A model of natural inflation with an effectively trans-Planckian decay constant can be easily achieved by the "phase locking" mechanism while keeping field values in the effective field theory within the Planck scale. We give detailed description of "phase locked" inflation based on this mechanism. We also construct supersymmetric natural inflation based on this mechanism and show that the model is consistent with low scale supersymmetry. We also investigate couplings of the inflaton with the minimal supersymmetric standard model to achieve an appropriate reheating process. Interestingly, in a…
Finite expressions for the mean value of the stress tensor corresponding to a scalar field with a generalized dispersion relation in a Friedman--Robertson--Walker universe are obtained using adiabatic renormalization. Formally divergent integrals are evaluated by means of dimensional regularization. The renormalization procedure is shown to be equivalent to a redefinition of the cosmological constant and the Newton constant in the semiclassical Einstein equations.
An important question in the derivation of the acceleration radiation, which also arises in Hawking's derivation of black hole radiance, is the need to invoke trans-Planckian physics for the quantum field that originates the created quanta. We point out that this issue can be further clarified by reconsidering the analysis in terms of particle detectors, transition probabilities, and local two-point functions. By writing down separate expressions for the spontaneous- and induced-transition probabilities of a uniformly accelerated detector, we show that the bulk of the effect comes from the nat…
We consider observational constraints on creation of particles induced by hypothetical trans-Planckian effects during the current stage of the Universe expansion. We show that compatibility with the diffuse gamma-ray background measured by the EGRET experiment strongly restricts this creation. In particular, it rules out the possibility to detect signatures of such short distance effects in anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background radiation. On the other hand, a possibility that some part of the ultra-high energy cosmic rays originates from new trans-Planckian physics remains open.
Based on the ultraviolet asymptotic freedom of nonlocal quantum gravity, we show that the trans-Planckian energy regime is unattainable in laboratory experiments. As physical implications, it turns out that the violation of causality, typical of nonlocal field theories, can never be detected in particle accelerators, while the asymptotic freedom of the theory provides an elegant solution to the so called trans-Planckian cosmological problem.
The ``trans-Planckian'' challenge in cosmology appears when we trace the present physical wavelengths of fluctuations backwards in time. They become smaller and smaller until crossing the Planck scale where conventional QFT is challenged, so that unknown ultraviolet physics may be traced in the observable cosmological fluctuations. Usually this issue is addressed in the inflationary context, but trans-Planckian reasoning is much broader. We examine this logic in a simple example of scalar quantum field theory in the expanding and contracting Milne universes, where wavelengths of the eigenmodes…
We propose a natural inflation model driven by an imaginary or axionic component of a Kähler modulus in string-inspired supergravity. The shift symmetry of the axion is gauged under an anomalous $U(1)_X$ symmetry, which leads to a modulus-dependent Fayet-Iliopoulos (FI) term. The matter fields are stabilized by F-terms, and the real component of the modulus is stabilized by the $U(1)_X$ D-term, while its axion remains light. Therefore, the masses of real and imaginary components of the modulus are separated at different scales. The scalar potential for natural inflation is realized by the supe…
Due to the quasi-exponential red-shifting which occurs during an inflationary period in the very early Universe, wavelengths which at the present time correspond to cosmological lengths are in general sub-Planckian during the early stages of inflation. This talk discusses two approaches to addressing this issue which both indicate that the standard predictions of inflationary cosmology - made using classical general relativity and weakly coupled scalar matter field theory - are not robust against changes in the physics on trans-Planckian scales. One approach makes use of modified dispersion re…
We examine the constraints cosmological observations can place on any trans-Planckian corrections to the primordial spectrum of perturbations underlying the anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background. We focus on models of trans-Planckian physics which lead to a modulated primordial spectrum. Rather than looking at a generic modulated spectrum, our calculations are based on a specific model, and are intended as a case study for the sort of constraints one could hope to apply on a well-motivated model of trans-Planckian physics. We present results for three different approaches -- a grid s…
A number of Swampland conjectures and in particular the Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC) suggest that de Sitter space is highly unstable if it exists at all. In this paper we construct effective theories of scalars rolling on potentials which are dual to a chain of short-lived dS spaces decaying from one to the next through a cascade of non-perturbative nucleation of bubbles. We find constraints on the effective potential resulting from various swampland criteria, including TCC, Weak Gravity Conjecture and Distance Conjecture. Surprisingly we find that TCC essentially incorporates a…