English

Photon mass from inflation

Astrophysics 2009-07-09 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We consider vacuum polarization from massless scalar electrodynamics in de Sitter inflation. The theory exhibits a 3+1 dimensional analogue of the Schwinger mechanism in which a photon mass is dynamically generated. The mechanism is generic for light scalar fields that couple minimally to gravity. The non-vanishing of the photon mass during inflation may result in magnetic fields on cosmological scales.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0205331,
  title  = {Photon mass from inflation},
  author = {Tomislav Prokopec and Ola Tornkvist and Richard Woodard},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0205331},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

RevTeX, 4 pages, 2 eps figures