Related papers: Choice of Quantum Vacuum for Inflation Observables
We study the effect of a non-trivial vacuum prescription on warm inflation observables, namely the power spectrum of the comoving curvature perturbation. Non-trivial choice of vacuum, can provide information about trans-Planckian physics.…
Recent observations about the cosmic microwave background evidence a clear discrepancy between the scale of inflation and the Planck scale expected in the conventional inflationary picture, based on simple chaotic inflationary models. This…
In the presence of a short-distance cutoff, the choice of a vacuum state in an inflating, non-de Sitter universe is unavoidably ambiguous. The ambiguity is related to the time at which initial conditions for the mode functions are specified…
When modelling inflaton fluctuations as a free quantum scalar field, the initial vacuum is conventionally imposed at the infinite past. This is called the Bunch-Davies (BD) vacuum. If however an asymptotically Minkowskian past does not…
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…
Starobinsky has suggested an inflation model which is obtained from the vacuum Einstein's equations modified by the one-loop corrections due to quantized matter fields. Although the one-loop gravitational action is not known for a general…
We study the conformal invariance of inflationary non-Gaussianities associated with scalar fluctuations in a non-Bunch-Davies initial state, known as the $\alpha$-vacuum, in single-field slow-roll inflation. The $\alpha$-vacuum is a…
We investigate chaotic inflation models with two scalar fields, such that one field (the inflaton) rolls while the other is trapped in a false vacuum state. The false vacuum becomes unstable when the inflaton field falls below some critical…
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…
There exist a one complex parameter family of de Sitter invariant vacua, known as alpha vacua. In the context of slow roll inflation, we show that all but the Bunch-Davies vacuum generates unacceptable production of high energy particles at…
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…
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…
Apart from the assumption that the inflation started at an infinite time in the past, the more realistic initial state of the quantum fluctuations is described by a mixed quantum state imposed at a finite value of the initial time. One of…
We study the inflationary evolution of a scalar field $h$ with an unstable potential for the case where the Hubble parameter $H$ during inflation is larger than the instability scale $\Lambda_I$ of the potential. Quantum fluctuations in the…
In this paper we consider inflation as a probe of new physics near the string or Planck scale. We discuss how new physics can be captured by the choice of vacuum, and how this leads to modifications of the primordial spectrum as well as the…
We calculate the power spectrum of vacuum fluctuations of a generic scalar field in a quantum cosmological setting that is manifestly singularity-free. The power spectrum is given in terms of the usual scale invariant spectrum plus scale…
While inflaton loops in the Euclidean vacuum generally have a negligible contribution to the power spectrum, loop effects can be substantially larger when the inflaton is in a non-thermal vacuum state. As an example, we show that in a…
In order to calculate the power spectrum generated during a stage of inflation, we have to specify the quantum state of the inflaton perturbations, which is conventionally assumed to be the Bunch-Davies vacuum. We argue that this choice is…
Since the duration of inflation is finite, imposing the initial condition in infinite past, i.e. the Bunch-Davies vacuum, is inherently ambiguous. In this paper, we resort to the mixed states as initial condition which are called the…
A self-consistent pre-inflationary extension of the inflationary scenario with the Starobinsky potential, favored by Planck data, is studied using techniques from loop quantum cosmology (LQC). The results are compared with the quadratic…