Related papers: Why do cosmological perturbations look classical t…
We show how the quantum to classical transition of the cosmological fluctuations produced during inflation can be described by means of the influence functional and the master equation. We split the inflaton field into the system-field…
Observational cosmology is in its "golden age" with a vast amount of recent data on the distribution of matter and light in the universe. This data can be used to probe theories of the very early universe. It is small amplitude cosmological…
Since inflationary perturbations must generically couple to all degrees of freedom present in the early Universe, it is more realistic to view these fluctuations as an open quantum system interacting with an environment. Then, on very…
In order to draw out the essential behavior of the universe, investigations of early universe cosmology often reduce the complex system to a simple integrable system. Inflationary models are of this kind as they focus on simple scalar field…
In these lectures I focus on early universe models which can explain the currently observed structure on large scales. I begin with a survey of inflationary cosmology, the current paradigm for understanding the origin of the universe as we…
The statistical properties of the primordial density perturbations has been considered in the past decade as a powerful probe of the physical processes taking place in the early universe. Within the inflationary paradigm, the properties of…
This review article aims at presenting the theory of inflation. We first describe the background spacetime behavior during the slow-roll phase and analyze how inflation ends and the Universe reheats. Then, we present the theory of…
Previously defined covariant and gauge-invariant perturbation variables, representing, e.g., the fractional spatial energy density gradient on hypersurfaces of constant expansion, are used to simplify the linear perturbation analysis of a…
We look at the transition to the semiclassical behaviour and the decoherence process for the inhomogeneous perturbations in the inflationary universe. Two different decoherence mechanisms appear: one dynamical, accompanied with a…
We propose an operational definition of the entropy of cosmological perturbations based on a truncation of the hierarchy of Green functions. The value of the entropy is unambiguous despite gauge invariance and the renormalization procedure.…
Quantum fluctuations are believed to play an important role in the thermalization of classical fields in inflationary cosmology but their relevance for isotropization/thermalization of the classical fields produced in heavy ion collisions…
The origin of the large scale structure in the universe - galaxies, quasars, clusters, voids, sheets - is one of the most important questions in cosmology. One can show that some non-thermal energy density fluctuations must have been…
We show that during inflation, a quantum fluctuation becomes classical at all orders if it becomes classical at first order. Implications are discussed.
The time evolution of primordial fluctuations conceals a wealth of insights into the high-energy physics at play during the earliest moments of our Universe, which is ultimately encoded in late-time spatial correlation functions. However,…
In the standard inflationary paradigm the inhomogeneities observed in the CMB arise from quantum fluctuations of an initially homogeneous and isotropic vacuum state. This picture suffers from two well-known weaknesses. First, it assumes…
We study the process whereby quantum cosmological perturbations become classical within inflationary cosmology. By setting up a master-equation formulation we show how quantum coherence for super-Hubble modes can be destroyed by their…
It has been shown that the primordial perturbations sourced by inflation are driven to classicality by unitary evolution alone. However, their coupling with the environment such as photons and subsequent decoherence renders the cosmological…
We compare the correlation functions of inflationary perturbations computed either with quantum or classical dynamics. Even if they are enforced to agree at a specific time during inflation, classical and quantum correlations will differ at…
A Schroedinger picture analysis of time dependent quantum oscillators, in a manner of Guth and Pi, clearly identifies two physical mechanisms for possible decoherence of vacuum fluctuations in early universe: turning of quantum oscillators…
Inflation in the early Universe is one of the most promising probes of gravity in the high-energy regime. However, observable scales give access to a limited window in the inflationary dynamics. In this essay, we argue that quantum…