The (No) Boundary Proposal and excited states in de Sitter holography

Abstract

In the AdS/CFT framework, vacuum and excited states are systematically described by imposing arbitrary Dirichlet boundary conditions at the AdS boundary. Furthermore, there are explicit relations connecting the quantum states to their corresponding dual Euclidean AdS geometries, in line with the Hartle-Hawking (HH) construction. The ground state therefore corresponds to the dominant saddle point under trivial conditions on the asymptotic boundary, which is the exact Euclidean AdS geometry. In contrast, the situation in de Sitter spacetime differs significantly, as there is no natural region analogous to the AdS boundary. Thus, the Hartle Hawking approach precisely defines the ground state as a path integral over smooth (Euclidean) geometries ending on a spatial Cauchy surface, with \textit{no} additional boundary or past singularity, known as the no boundary proposal. In this work, we revisit the no boundary proposal to describe excited states within the framework of de Sitter Holography. Specifically, we investigate the possibility of defining a family of excited states by introducing an additional boundary in the Euclidean region and imposing arbitrary Dirichlet boundary conditions on it. As a result, we demonstrate that the computation of $n$ point correlation functions is consistent with the presence of excited states, and furthermore, show that cosmological late-time observables in these states undergo non-trivial modifications. This study may have significant implications for the development of the holographic dictionary for de Sitter spacetimes.