English

Initial Conditions for Inflation

High Energy Physics - Theory 2009-11-07 v1 Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

Free scalar fields in de Sitter space have a one-parameter family of states invariant under the de Sitter group, including the standard thermal vacuum. We show that, except for the thermal vacuum, these states are unphysical when gravitational interactions are included. We apply these observations to the quantum state of the inflaton, and find that, at best, dramatic fine tuning is required for states other than the thermal vacuum to lead to observable features in the CMBR anisotropy.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/0209231,
  title  = {Initial Conditions for Inflation},
  author = {Nemanja Kaloper and Matthew Kleban and Albion Lawrence and Stephen Shenker and Leonard Susskind},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/0209231},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

31 pages, 4 figures