Algebraic Observational Cosmology

Abstract: What can be measured by an observer in our universe? We address this question by constructing an algebra of gravitationally-dressed observables accessible to a comoving observer in FLRW spacetimes that are asymptotically de Sitter in the past, describing an inflationary epoch. An essential quantized degree of freedom is the zero-mode of the inflaton, which leads to fluctuations in the effective cosmological constant during inflation and prevents the existence of a maximum entropy state in the semiclassical limit. Due to the inaccessibility of measurements beyond our cosmological horizon, we demonstrate that all states are mixed with well-defined von Neumann entropy (up to a state-independent constant). For semiclassical states, the von Neumann entropy corresponds to the generalized entropy of the observer's causal diamond, a fine-grained quantity that is sensitive to the initial conditions of the universe.