English

Must Cosmological Perturbations Remain Non-Adiabatic After Multi-Field Inflation?

Astrophysics 2009-11-10 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Even if non-adiabatic perturbations are generated in multi-field inflation, the perturbations will become adiabatic if the universe after inflation enters an era of local thermal equilibrium, with no non-zero conserved quantities, and will remain adiabatic as long as the wavelength is outside the horizon, even when local thermal equilibrium no longer applies. Small initial non-adiabatic perturbations associated with imperfect local thermal equilibrium remain small when baryons are created from out-of-equilibrium decay of massive particles, or when dark matter particles go out of local thermal equilibrium.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0405397,
  title  = {Must Cosmological Perturbations Remain Non-Adiabatic After Multi-Field Inflation?},
  author = {Steven Weinberg},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0405397},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

12 pages, typographical errors corrected, acknowledgment added. Article accepted for publication in Physical Review D