English

Quantum interference in gravitational particle production

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2023-01-18 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Previous numerical investigations of gravitational particle production during the coherent oscillation period of inflation displayed unexplained fluctuations in the spectral density of the produced particles. We argue that these features are due to the quantum interference of the coherent scattering reactions that produce the particles. We provide accurate analytic formulae to compute the particle production amplitude for a conformally-coupled scalar field, including the interference effect in the kinematic region where the production can be interpreted as inflaton scattering into scalar final states via graviton exchange.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2209.01713,
  title  = {Quantum interference in gravitational particle production},
  author = {Edward Basso and Daniel J. H. Chung and Edward W. Kolb and Andrew J. Long},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.01713},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

19 pages + appendices and references, 3 figures, v2 - references added, matches JHEP

R2 v1 2026-06-28T00:42:47.602Z