Quantum field thermalization in expanding backgrounds
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
2009-03-13 v2 Astrophysics
Abstract
The 2PI effective action formalism for quantum fields out of equilibrium is set up in an expanding (Friedmann-Robertson-Walker) background. We write down and solve the evolution equations for a phi^4 model at NLO in a coupling expansion. We comment on issues of renormalization, lattice discretization and the range of applicability of the approach. A number of example calculations are presented, including thermalization and (p)reheating. Generalizations to more complicated systems and applications are discussed.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0806.3158,
title = {Quantum field thermalization in expanding backgrounds},
author = {Anders Tranberg},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0806.3158},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
27 pages, 11 figures. Some modifications and clarifications in presentation. Minor errors and some typos fixed. Conclusions unchanged. Published version