Related papers: An effective field theory during inflation: reduce…
We obtain the non-equilibrium effective action of an inflaton like scalar field --the system-- by tracing over sub Hubble degrees of freedom of "environmental" light scalar fields. The effective action is stochastic leading to effective…
We identify the effective theory describing inflationary super-Hubble scales and show it to be a special case of effective field theories appropriate to open systems. Open systems allow information to be exchanged between the degrees of…
If the inflaton couples to other degrees of freedom that populate the post-inflationary stage, such coupling modifies the dynamics of the inflaton \emph{during} inflation. We consider light fermions Yukawa coupled to the inflaton as…
We present the first quantum field theory model of inflation that is renormalizable in the matter sector, with a super-Hubble inflaton mass and sub-Planckian field excursions, which is thus technically natural and consistent with a…
We examine the spectrum of inflaton fluctuations resulting from any given long period of exponential inflation. Infrared and ultraviolet divergences in the inflaton dispersion summed over all modes do not appear in our approach. We show how…
We study the quantum fluctuations of scalar fields with a variable effective mass during an inflationary phase. We consider the situation where the effective mass depends on a background scalar field, which evolves during inflation from…
We investigate the validity of effective field theory methods and the decoupling of heavy fields during inflation. Considering models of inflation in which the inflaton is coupled to a heavy (super-Hubble) degree of freedom initially in its…
The physics of the inflationary universe requires the study of the out of equilibrium evolution of quantum fields in curved spacetime. We present the evolution for both the geometry and the matter (described by the quantum inflaton field)…
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…
We clarify classical inflaton models by considering them as effective field theories `a la Ginzburg-Landau. In this approach, the WMAP statement excluding the pure phi^4 potential implies the presence of an inflaton mass term at the scale m…
We find that the amplitude of quantum fluctuations of the invariant de Sitter vacuum coincides exactly with that of the vacuum of a comoving observer for a massless scalar (inflaton) field. We propose redefining the actual physical power…
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…
We build an effective field theory of multi-field inflationary fluctuations based on the adiabatic perturbation and on any number of matter fluctuations in the non-adiabatic sector, without imposing extra symmetries on the latter. Focusing…
We compute the rate with which super-Hubble cosmological fluctuations are decohered during inflation, by their gravitational interactions with unobserved shorter-wavelength scalar and tensor modes. We do so using Open Effective Field Theory…
We analyse the dynamics of spinodal decomposition in inflationary cosmology using the closed time path formalism of out of equilibrium quantum field theory combined with the non-perturbative Hartree approximation. In addition to a general…
We study the decoherence of massive fields during inflation based on the Zurek's density matrix approach. With the cubic interaction between inflaton and massive fields, the reduced density matrix for the massive fields can be calculated in…
The observed power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is consistent with inflationary cosmology, which predicts a nearly scale-invariant power spectrum of quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field as they exit the Hubble…
Starting from an initial state of thermal equilibrium, we derive an expression for the quantum fluctuation in the energy density during the inflationary epoch in terms of the mode functions for the inflaton field. The effect of this…
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…
It is shown that the inflationary era in early universe is realized due to the effect of backreaction of quantized matter fields. In fact we start by quantizing a free scalar field in the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker space-time, and the field…