Cosmological singularity resolution from quantum gravity: the emergent-bouncing universe

Understand

Alternative scenarios to the Big Bang singularity have been subject of intense research for several decades by now.

• Most popular in this sense have been frameworks were such singularity is replaced by a bounce around some minimal cosmological volume or by some early quantum phase.
• This latter scenario was devised a long time ago and referred as an "emergent universe" (in the sense that our universe emerged from a constant volume quantum phase).
• We show here that within an improved framework of canonical quantum gravity (the so called Quantum Reduced Loop Gravity) the Friedmann equations for cosmology are modified in such a way to replace the big bang singularity with a short bounce {preceded by a metastable quantum phase in which the volume of the universe oscillates between a series of local maxima and minima}.