Skip to content
DraconiticResearch
Search Sources API
203,203 studies31 sourcesUpdated 29 min ago
PreprintarXiv licencearXiv

An Observer in de Sitter Space, and Rereading Everett

  • Edward Witten
Open at sourcePDFDOICite

Abstract

After re-examining a classic article by Hugh Everett, I will discuss the entropy of de Sitter space from the standpoint of an observer living in the space. This provides a nice example of the importance -- for certain questions -- of taking seriously the fact that in cosmology any observer is really part of the universe that is being observed. (This article has appeared in a special issue of International Journal of Modern Physics A in honor of Gerard 't Hooft.

Related

  1. Small black hole in de Sitter as an observer
    Guanda Lin, Haifeng Tang
    arXivPreprintarXiv licenceFull textGravitation & general relativityHigh-energy & particle physicsarXiv
  2. Boundary Conditions and Entanglement in Anti-de Sitter Space
    Konstantinos Boutivas, Dimitrios Katsinis, Georgios Pastras +2
    HALPreprintLicence not statedGravitation & general relativityHigh-energy & particle physicsHAL
  3. Finite Spectral Recurrences for Loop Integrals in de Sitter and Anti-de Sitter Space
    Bruce A. Bassett, Sergio Cacciatori, Ugo Moschella
    arXivPreprintCC BY 4.0Full textGravitation & general relativityHigh-energy & particle physicsarXiv
  4. Notes on de Sitter space
    Beatrix Mühlmann
    arXivPreprintarXiv licenceFull textHigh-energy & particle physicsarXiv
  5. Carroll geometry meets de Sitter space via holography
    Chris D. A. Blair, Niels A. Obers, Ziqi Yan
    Physics Letters BPeer-reviewedCC BY8 citedHigh-energy & particle physicsOpenAlex

Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@misc{witten2026observer,
  title = {{An Observer in de Sitter Space, and Rereading Everett}},
  author = {Edward Witten},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.04804},
  eprint = {2610.04804},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.04804},
}
RIS
TY  - UNPB
TI  - An Observer in de Sitter Space, and Rereading Everett
AU  - Edward Witten
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/03
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.04804
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.04804
AB  - After re-examining a classic article by Hugh Everett, I will discuss the entropy of de Sitter space from the standpoint of an observer living in the space. This provides a nice example of the importance -- for certain questions -- of taking seriously the fact that in cosmology any observer is really part of the universe that is being observed. (This article has appeared in a special issue of International Journal of Modern Physics A in honor of Gerard 't Hooft.
ER  -