Würzburg Seminar on Quantum Field Theory and Gravity (Alexander Westphal, 10.11.2026)

Jackiw-Teitelboim (JT) gravity with positive cosmological constant is a toy model to study the emergence of expanding de Sitter universes from a quantum state. Its density matrix is a superposition of double-trumpet amplitudes which are solutions of a Wheeler-DeWitt equation. In the talk, we will compare predictions of such mixed states for classical expanding universes with the corresponding predictions of no-boundary wavefunctions. Double-trumpet amplitudes consistent with holography, whose semiclassical limit matches the result from Schwarzian boundary fluctuations, lead to a flat probability distribution for the size of the universe, consistent with models of inflation. This is in contrast to the suppression of large universes predicted by no-boundary wave functions.