Related papers: No intrinsic decoherence of inflationary cosmologi…
The decoherence of quantum fluctuations into classical perturbations during inflation is discussed. A simple quantum mechanical argument, using a spatial particle wavefunction rather than a field description, shows that observable…
This pedagogical review aims at presenting the fundamental aspects of the theory of inflationary cosmological perturbations of quantum-mechanical origin. The analogy with the well-known Schwinger effect is discussed in detail and a…
The inflationary and pre-inflationary evolution of scalar modes of cosmological perturbations in a closed universe is analyzed for a loop quantum cosmology model with an inflationary regime consistent with the constraints on inflation…
To discuss the quantum to classical transition in quantum cosmology, we study the decoherence factor and the peak of the Wigner function, which respectively represent the degree of decoherence and the degree to which the classical motion of…
There is a persistent state of confusion regarding the account of the quantum origin of the seeds of cosmological structure during inflation. In fact, a recent article (C. Kiefer & D. Polarski, ArXiv: 0810.0087 [astro-ph]) addresses the…
The standard inflationary version of the origin of the cosmic structure as the result of the quantum fluctuations during the inflationary stage is less than fully satisfactory: how exactly does the Universe transit from a homogeneous and…
Informed by a quantum information perspective, we interpret cosmological expansion of space as growing entanglement between underlying degrees of freedom. In particular, we focus on inflationary cosmology, which, while being a successful…
This thesis presents a theoretical investigation into the quantum field theoretic aspects of quantum correlations and decoherence in the cosmological spacetimes. We shall focus on the inflationary or dark energy dominated phase of the…
We investigate quantum decoherence in a class of models which interpolates between expanding (inflation) and contracting (ekpyrosis) scenarios. For the cases which result in a scale-invariant power spectrum, we find that ekpyrotic universes…
Based on the conventional metric tensor and driven by a nearly constant energy density, cosmic inflation, characterized by a remarkably accelerated expansion, was proposed as an early epoch in the Universe. The energy density is typically…
The inflationary paradigm provides a mechanism to generate the primordial perturbations needed to explain the observed large scale structures in the universe. Inflation traces back all the inhomogeneities to quantum fluctuations although…
We develop a quantum-cosmological framework in which the inflationary potential emerges from the structure of the wave function of the universe rather than being postulated. Starting from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation for a flat…
A semiclassical description of quantum systems is applied to probe the dynamics of the cosmological model of an inflationary universe with quadratic inflaton potential, described in a quantum framework of geometrodynamics. The systematic…
We calculate the reduced density matrix for the inflaton field in a model of chaotic inflation by tracing out degrees of freedom corresponding to various bosonic fields. We find a qualitatively new contribution to the density matrix given…
We investigate how interactions affect the quantum state of scalar perturbations during inflation and the quantum correlations they may exhibit. Focusing on the case of scalar perturbations in single-field inflation, we model interactions…
This thesis is dedicated to studying cosmological inflation, which is a period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe that is required to explain the observed anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. Inflation, when…
In the context of Quantum Cosmology and the Wheeler-DeWitt equation we investigate the possible effects of a non semiclassical wave-function of the universe on the evolution of the inflationary perturbations. These are associated with the…
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 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 examine the processes of quantum squeezing and decoherence of density perturbations produced during a slowly contracting ekpyrotic phase in which entropic perturbations are converted to curvature perturbations before the bounce to an…