English

Inflation and squeezed quantum states

Astrophysics 2010-04-08 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

The inflationary cosmology is analyzed from the point of view of squeezed quantum states. As noted by Grishchuk and Sidorov, the amplification of quantum fluctuations into macroscopic perturbations which occurs during cosmic inflation is a process of quantum squeezing. We carefully develop the squeezed state formalism and derive the equations that govern the evolution of a gaussian initial state. We derive the power spectrum of density perturbations for a simple inflationary model and discuss its features. We conclude that the squeezed state formalism provides an interesting framework within which to study the amplification process, but,in disagreement with the claims of Grishchuk and Sidorov, that it does {\em not} provide us with any new physical results.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9303001,
  title  = {Inflation and squeezed quantum states},
  author = {Andreas Albrecht and Pedro Ferreira and Michael Joyce and Tomislav Prokopec},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9303001},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

33 pages, one section added, significant revisions, 6 figures (in uuencoded file), Imperial/TP/92-93/21