Decoherence Can Relax Cosmic Acceleration: an Example
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
2017-09-20 v3 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
High Energy Physics - Theory
Abstract
We investigate back reaction in de Sitter space in an approach where only states that are observationally accessible are included in the density matrix. Using the Bunch-Davies vacuum as the initial condition we find for a conformal scalar field and a cosmological constant that tracing over the unobservable states beyond the cosmological horizon leads to a thermal spectrum of particles and that such a configuration is unstable under semi-classical back reaction. It is concluded that this prescription results in an instability of de Sitter space with a gradually increasing horizon size.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1610.06637,
title = {Decoherence Can Relax Cosmic Acceleration: an Example},
author = {Tommi Markkanen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.06637},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
11 pages, 2 figures. v2: expanded text, new title and abstract. Results unchanged. v3: version accepted for publication by JCAP, added references