Inflationary spacetimes are incomplete in past directions

Phys Rev Lett. 2003 Apr 18;90(15):151301. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.90.151301. Epub 2003 Apr 15.

Abstract

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.