Hartle-Hawking no-boundary proposal in dRGT massive gravity: Making inflation exponentially more probable

Abstract

It is known that the no-boundary proposal in the traditional Einstein gravity does not prefer inflation, that is, the probability of realizing a large number of e-folds is exponentially suppressed. This situation may be changed drastically in a class of nonlinear massive gravity theories recently proposed by deRham, Gabadadze and Tolley, called dRGT massive gravity. We show that the contribution from the massive gravity sector can enhance the probability of a large number of e-folds substantially for a sufficiently large mass parameter mg comparable to the Hubble parameter during inflation, say $m_g \gtrsim 10^{12}$ GeV. We illustrate possible models to trigger such a large mass parameter in the early universe while it is negligibly small in the present universe. This opens a new window to explore the inflationary scenario in the context of quantum cosmology.