Related papers: Inflationary Decoherence from the Gravitational Fl…
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 study the process whereby quantum cosmological perturbations become classical within inflationary cosmology. By setting up a master-equation formulation we show how quantum coherence for super-Hubble modes can be destroyed by their…
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…
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 compute the rate with which unobserved fields decohere other fields to which they couple, both in flat space and in de Sitter space, for spectator scalar fields prepared in their standard adiabatic vacuum. The process is very efficient…
We study the evironment-induced decoherence of cosmological perturbations in an inflationary background. Splitting our spectrum of perturbations into two distinct sets characterized by their wavelengths (super and sub-Hubble), we identify…
We investigated the evolution of the primordial density perturbations produced by inflation with thermal dissipation. A full relativistic analysis on the evolution of initial perturbations from the warm inflation era to a…
The fluctuations in the inflaton field at the end of inflation which seed the density perturbations are prepared in a pure quantum state. It is generally assumed that some physics causes this pure state to decohere so that it should be…
We reconsider the enhancement of primordial gravitational waves that arises from a quantum gravitational model of inflation. A distinctive feature of this model is that the end of inflation witnesses a brief phase during which the Hubble…
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…
I study a stochastic approach to the recently introduced fresh inflation model for super Hubble scales. I find that the state loses its coherence at the end of the fresh inflationary period as a consequence of the damping of the…
We investigate entanglement generation between the sub- and super-Hubble modes of inflaton fluctuations, in the context of particle production from perturbations during inflation. We consider a large-field inflationary scenario where…
We use the 3+1 formalism of numerical relativity to investigate the robustness of Starobinsky and Higgs inflation to inhomogeneous initial conditions, in the form of either field gradient or kinetic energy density. Sub-Hubble and…
Slow-roll inflation can become eternal if the quantum variance of the inflaton field around its slowly rolling classical trajectory is converted into a distribution of classical spacetimes inflating at different rates, and if the variance…
We consider an inflationary universe model in which the phase of accelerated expansion was preceded by a non-singular bounce and a period of contraction which involves a phase of deceleration. We follow fluctuations which exit the Hubble…
We study the inflationary quantum-to-classical transition for the adiabatic curvature perturbation $\zeta$ due to quantum decoherence, focusing on the role played by squeezed-limit mode couplings. We evolve the quantum state $\Psi$ in the…
It is well-known that the primordial scalar curvature and tensor perturbations, $\zeta$ and $\gamma_{ij}$, are conserved on super-horizon scales in minimal inflation models. However, their wave functional has a rapidly oscillating phase…
In the standard inflationary paradigm, cosmological density perturbations are generated as quantum fluctuations in the early Universe, but then undergo a quantum-to-classical transition. A key role in this transition is played by squeezing…
We show that the entropy of cosmological perturbations originating as quantum vacuum fluctuations in the very early universe, including the contribution of the leading nonlinear interactions, can be viewed as momentum space entanglement…
I study the gauge-invariant fluctuations of the metric during inflation. In the infrared sector the metric fluctuations can be represented by a coarse-grained field. We can write a Schroedinger equation for the coarse-grained metric…