Related papers: Influence functional approach to decoherence durin…
We show how the quantum to classical transition of the cosmological fluctuations produced during inflation can be described by means of the influence functional and the master equation. We split the inflaton field into the system-field…
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 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…
The usual description of inflationary fluctuations uses the framework of quantum field theory (QFT) in curved spacetime, in which quantum fluctuations are superimposed on a classical background spacetime. Even for large fluctuations, such…
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 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 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…
We show how the quantum-to-classical transition of the cosmological fluctuations produced during an inflationary stage can be described using the consistent histories approach. We identify the corresponding histories in the limit 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…
We propose one way to regularize the fluctuations generated during inflation, whose infrared (IR) corrections diverge logarithmically. In the case of a single field inflation model, recently, we proposed one solution to the IR divergence…
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…
Quantum decoherence and the transition to semiclassical behavior during inflation has been extensively considered in the literature. In this paper, we use a simple model to analyze the same process in ekpyrosis. Our result is that the…
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…
By making a suitable generalization of the Starobinsky stochastic inflation, we propose a classical phase space formulation of stochastic inflation which may be used for a quantitative study of decoherence of cosmological perturbations…
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 study the power spectrum of super-Hubble fluctuations of an inflaton-like scalar field, the "system", coupled to another scalar field, the "environment" during de Sitter inflation. We obtain the reduced density matrix for the inflaton…
We study the decoherence of massive fields during inflation based on the Zurek's density matrix approach. With the cubic interaction between inflaton and massive fields, the reduced density matrix for the massive fields can be calculated in…
Inflation is terminated by a non-equilibrium process which finally leads to a thermal state. We study the onset of this transition in a class of hybrid inflation models. The exponential growth of tachyonic modes leads to decoherence and…
In order to shed light on the quantum-to-classical transition of the primordial perturbations in single field inflation, we investigate the decoherence and associated quantum corrections to the correlation functions of superhorizon scalar…