Related papers: Escaping the crunch: gravitational effects in clas…
We show how the quantum-to-classical transition of the cosmological fluctuations produced during an inflationary stage can be described using the consistent histories approach. We identify the corresponding histories in the limit of…
We show that classicality emerges during quantum phase transitions due to parametric interactions without coupling to environments. The Wigner functions are explicitly calculated for the Gaussian vacuum, number, and thermal states of a free…
We derive the dynamics of the gravitational collapse of a homogeneous and spherically symmetric cloud in a classical set-up endowed with a topological sector of gravity and a non-minimal coupling to fermions. The effective theory consists…
For landscapes of field theory vacua, we identify an effect that can greatly enhance the decay rates to wildly distant minima--so much so that such transitions may dominate over transitions to near neighbors. We exhibit these 'giant leaps'…
In the framework of Inflationary theory, the assumption that the quantum state of the perturbations is a non-vacuum state leads to a difficulty: non-vacuum initial states imply, in general, a large energy density of inflaton field quanta,…
False-vacuum eternal inflation can be described as a random walk on the network of vacua of the string landscape. In this paper we show that the problem can be mapped naturally to a problem of directed percolation. The mapping relies on two…
Motivated by the discovery of a plenitude of metastable vacua in a string landscape and the possibility of rapid tunneling between these vacua, we revisit the dynamics of a false vacuum bubble in a background de Sitter spacetime. We find…
Open inflation scenario is attracting a renewed interest in the context of string landscape. Since there are a large number of metastable de Sitter vacua in string landscape, tunneling transitions to lower metastable vacua through the…
We study the effect on the primordial cosmological perturbations of a sharp transition from inflationary to a radiation and matter dominated epoch respectively. We assume that the perturbations are generated by the vacuum fluctuations of a…
Viewed as approximations to quantum mechanics, classical evolutions can violate the positive-semidefiniteness of the density matrix. The nature of this violation suggests a classification of dynamical systems based on classical-quantum…
It has recently been shown in high resolution numerical simulations that relativistic collisions of bubbles in the context of a multi-vacua potential may lead to the creation of bubbles in a new vacuum. In this paper, we show that scalar…
The next generation of gravitational wave detectors holds out the prospect of detecting a stochastic gravitational background generated in the very early universe. In this article, we review the various cosmological processes which can lead…
Observationally, the universe appears virtually critical. Yet, there is no simple explanation for this state. In this article we advance and explore the premise that the dynamics of the universe always seeks equilibrium conditions.…
The manner in which one approaches the interface between gravitation and quantum theory is influenced by one's posture regarding quantum mechanics and the issues that revolve about its interpretational problems. We discuss here the way in…
We discuss the classicalization of a quantum state induced by an environment in the inflationary stage of the universe. The classicalization is necessary for the homogeneous ground sate to become classical non-homogeneous one accompanied…
The theory of eternal inflation in an inflaton potential with multiple vacua predicts that our universe is one of many bubble universes nucleating and growing inside an ever-expanding false vacuum. The collision of our bubble with another…
Primordial fluctuations in inflationary cosmology acquire classical properties through decoherence when their wavelengths become larger than the Hubble scale. Although decoherence is effective, it is not complete, so a significant part of…
We investigate the cosmological production of gravitational waves in a nonsingular flat cosmology powered by a "running vacuum" energy density described by $\rho_{\Lambda}\equiv\rho_{\Lambda}(H)$, a phenomenological expression potentially…
A wide variety of vacua, and their cosmological realization, may provide an explanation for the apparently anthropic choices of some parameters of particle physics and cosmology. If the probability on various parameters is weighted by…
Topological defects can be formed during inflation by phase transitions as well as by quantum nucleation. We study the effect of the expansion of the Universe on the internal structure of the defects. We look for stationary solutions to the…