Tunneling wave function of the universe II: the backreaction problem

Abstract: The tunneling wave function of the universe is calculated exactly for a de Sitter minisuperspace model with a massless conformally coupled scalar field, both by solving the Wheeler-DeWitt equation and by evaluating the Lorentzian path integral. The same wave function is found in both approaches. The back-reaction of quantum field fluctuations on the scale factor amounts to a constant renormalization of the vacuum energy density. This is in contrast to the recent suggestion of Feldbrugge $et$ $al.$ that the back-reaction should diverge when the scale factor gets small, $a \to 0$. Similar results are found for a massive scalar field in the limit of a large mass. We also verified that the tunneling wave function can be expressed as a transition amplitude from a universe of vanishing size with the scalar field in the state of Euclidean vacuum, as it was suggested in our earlier work.