Related papers: Stochastic Samples versus Vacuum Expectation Value…
During inflation explicit perturbative computations of quantum field theories which contain massless, non-conformal fields exhibit secular effects that grow as powers of the logarithm of the inflationary scale factor. Starobinskii's…
An appealing feature of inflationary cosmology is the presence of a phase-space attractor, "slow roll", which washes out the dependence on initial field velocities. We investigate the robustness of this property under backreaction from…
This paper contains a detailed study of the properties of a simple model attempting to explain dark energy as originated from quantum fluctuations of a light spectator scalar field in inflation. In [1] we recently outlined how Starobinsky's…
Cosmic inflation may exhibit stochastic periods during which quantum fluctuations dominate over the semi-classical evolution. Extracting observables in these regimes is a notoriously difficult program as quantum randomness makes them fully…
During inflation explicit perturbative computations of quantum field theories which contain massless, non-conformal fields exhibit secular effects that grow as powers of the logarithm of the inflationary scale factor. Starobinski\u{\i}'s…
In an inhomogeneous universe, an observer associated with a particular matter field does not necessarily measure the same cosmological evolution as an observer in a homogeneous and isotropic universe. Here we consider, in the context of a…
In this paper a quantum mechanical phase space picture is constructed for coarse-grained free quantum fields in an inflationary Universe. The appropriate stochastic quantum Liouville equation is derived. Explicit solutions for the phase…
The theory of cosmological fluctuations assumes that the pre-inflationary state of the universe was the quantum vacuum of a scalar field(s) coupled to gravity. The observed cosmic microwave background fluctuations are then interpreted as…
The formalism of stochastic inflation is a powerful tool for analyzing the backreaction of cosmological perturbations, and making precise predictions for inflationary observables. We demonstrate this with the simple $m^2\phi^2$ model of…
We formulate a stochastic generalisation of the Schwinger effect, extending pair production to statistically fluctuating gauge-field backgrounds. Our approach captures realistic field configurations that are transient, inhomogeneous, and…
We develop the stochastic approach to thermodynamics based on the stochastic dynamics, which can be discrete (master equation) continuous (Fokker-Planck equation), and on two assumptions concerning entropy. The first is the definition of…
The fluctuations of the vacuum energy are treated as a non-equilibrium process and a stochastic model for the cosmological constant is presented, which yields a natural explanation for the smallness or zero value of the constant in the…
The time-dependent cosmological term arises from the energy-momentum tensor calculated in a state different from the ground state. We discuss the expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor on the rhs of Einstein equations in various…
This is an old article which has never been posted for public use and which only appeard in a relatively hard-to-get Proceedings of the Sakharov Conference in Moscow (May, 1991). The subject of this article has received a lot of attention…
The back-reaction of a classical gravitational field interacting with quantum matter fields is described by the semiclassical Einstein equation, which has the expectation value of the quantum matter fields stress tensor as a source. The…
The stochastic effective theory approach, often called stochastic inflation, is widely used in cosmology to describe scalar field dynamics during inflation. The existing formulations are, however, more qualitative than quantitative because…
We stochastically formulate the theory of scalar quantum electrodynamics on a de Sitter background. This reproduces the leading infrared logarithms at each loop order. It also allows one to sum the series of leading infrared logarithms to…
The stochastic inflation program is a framework for understanding the dynamics of a quantum scalar field driving an inflationary phase. Though widely used and accepted, there have over recent years been serious criticisms of this theory. In…
Inflationary cosmology successfully accounts for the observed properties of primordial fluctuations using quantum field theory in an expanding background. However, the quantum nature of these fluctuations has not been experimentally…
We consider the backreaction problem of a quantized minimally coupled massless scalar field in cosmology. The adiabatically regularized stress-energy tensor in a general Friedmann-Robertson-Walker background is approximately evaluated by…