Emergent de Sitter Epoch of the Quantum Cosmos from Loop Quantum Cosmology

The quantum nature of the big bang is reexamined in the framework of loop quantum cosmology. The strict application of a regularization procedure to the Hamiltonian, originally developed for the Hamiltonian in loop quantum gravity, leads to a qualitative modification of the bounce paradigm. Quantum gravity effects still lead to a quantum bounce connecting deterministically large classical universes. However, the evolution features a large epoch of a de Sitter universe, with an emergent cosmological constant of Planckian order, smoothly transiting into a spatially flat expanding universe.