Related papers: Pointer states for primordial fluctuations in infl…
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…
We clarify the way in which cosmological perturbations of quantum origin, produced during inflation, assume classical properties. Two features play an important role in this process: First, the dynamics of fluctuations which are presently…
According to the inflationary scenario of cosmology, all structure in the Universe can be traced back to primordial fluctuations during an accelerated (inflationary) phase of the very early Universe. A conceptual problem arises due to the…
The behaviour of quantum metric perturbations produced during inflation is considered at the stage after the second Hubble radius crossing. It is shown that the classical correlation between amplitude and momentum of a perturbation mode,…
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 re-examine the decoherence rate of primordial fluctuations within minimal inflationary models, using only the gravitational interactions required for the underlying fluctuation-generation mechanism itself. Since gravity provides the…
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…
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…
According to the inflationary scenario for the very early Universe, all inhomogeneities in the Universe are of genuine quantum origin. On the other hand, looking at these inhomogeneities and measuring them, clearly no specific quantum…
According to the inflationary scenario, all structure in the Universe can be traced back to quantum fluctuations of the metric and scalar field(s) during inflation. The seeds of this structure can be observed as classical anisotropies in…
We argue that the preferred classical variables that emerge from a pure quantum state are determined by its entanglement structure in the form of redundant records: information shared between many subsystems. Focusing on the early universe,…
We examine from first principles one of the basic assumptions of modern quantum theories of structure formation in the early universe, i.e., the conditions upon which fluctuations of a quantum field may transmute into classical stochastic…
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…
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 study the implications of deformed quantum algebras for the generation of primordial perturbations from slow-roll inflation. Specifically, we assume that the quantum commutator of the inflaton's amplitude and momentum in Fourier space…
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 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 investigate quantum entanglement of a scalar field in the inflationary universe. By introducing a bipartite system using a lattice model of scalar field, we apply the separability criterion based on the partial transpose operation and…
In the primordial universe, fields with mass much larger than the mass-scale of the event-horizon (such as the Hubble parameter in inflation) exist ubiquitously, and can be excited from time to time and oscillate quickly around their…