Related papers: On the Decoherence of Primordial Gravitons
The scale--independence of the primordial curvature perturbation suggests that it comes from the vacuum fluctuation during inflation of a light scalar field. This field may be the inflaton, or a different `curvaton' field. The observation…
We derive in detail the equations of motion for the tensorial modes of primordial metric perturbations in the Coupled-Scalar-Tachyon Bounce Universe. We solve for the gravitational wave equations in the pre-bounce contraction and the…
We illustrate how it is possible to calculate the quantum gravitational effects on the spectra of primordial scalar/tensor perturbations starting from the canonical, Wheeler-De Witt, approach to quantum cosmology. The composite…
A tensor-type cosmological perturbation, defined as a transverse and traceless spatial fluctuation, is often interpreted as the gravitational waves. While decoupled from the scalar-type perturbations in linear order, the tensor…
Quadratic gravity is a fourth-order (in derivatives) theory that can serve as an attractive upgrade to the standard description of gravity provided by General Relativity, thanks to its renormalizability and its built-in description of…
The detection of primordial gravitational waves would offer a direct evidence of inflation and valuable insights into the dynamics of the early universe. During post-inflation reheating period, when the inflaton coherently oscillates at the…
The curvaton and the inhomogeneous reheating scenarios for the generation of the cosmological curvature perturbation on large scales represent an alternative to the standard slow-roll scenario where the observed density perturbations are…
One of the fundamental characteristics of slow roll inflation is its generation of tensor perturbations, which manifest as stochastic gravitational waves (GWs). Slow roll inflation results in a nearly scale-invariant GW spectrum that…
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…
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…
We derive the primordial power spectrum of density fluctuations in the framework of quantum cosmology. For this purpose we perform a Born-Oppenheimer approximation to the Wheeler-DeWitt equation for an inflationary universe with a scalar…
The primordial curvature perturbation \zeta may be generated by some curvaton field \sigma, which is negligible during inflation and has more or less negligible interactions until it decays. In the current scenario, the curvaton starts to…
We follow the life of a generic primordial perturbation mode (scalar or tensor) subject to modified dispersion relations (MDR), as its proper wavelength is stretched by expansion. A necessary condition ensuring that travelling waves can be…
We discuss metric perturbations produced during a period of inflation in the early universe where two scalar fields evolve. The final scalar perturbation spectrum can be calculated in terms of the perturbed expansion along neighbouring…
In the pre-reheating era, following cosmic inflation and preceding radiation domination, the energy density may be dominated by an oscillating massive scalar condensate, such as is the case for quadratic chaotic inflation. We have found in…
We study the effects of explicit spacetime-symmetry breaking on primordial tensor fluctuations using an effective-field theory for Lorentz/CPT violation. We find that the graviton is still massless, but that the propagation speed of tensor…
We propose a testable alternative to inflation directly built in a very general class of ultraviolet complete theories of quantum gravity enjoying Weyl invariance. After the latter is spontaneously broken, logarithmic quantum corrections to…
We investigate the cosmological background evolution and perturbations in a general class of spatially covariant theories of gravity, which propagates two tensor modes and one scalar mode. We show that the structure of the theory is…
At the linear level, the gravitational wave (GW) spectrum predicted by inflation, and many of its alternatives, can have arbitrarily small amplitude and consequently an unconstrained tilt. However, at second order, tensor fluctuations are…
After the inflationary phase, the universe enters the preheating phase, during which the inflaton field rolls down its potential and oscillates. When the potential significantly deviates from a parabolic shape at its minimum, these…