Related papers: Decoherence of Vacuum Fluctuations in Cosmology
An analysis of the decoherence of quantum fluctuations shows that production of classical adiabatic density perturbations may not take place in models of power-law inflation with power 1< p < 3. Some consequences for models of extended…
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…
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 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…
During inflation, the geometry of spacetime is described by a (quasi-)de Sitter phase. Inflationary observables are determined by the underlying (softly broken) de Sitter isometry group SO(1, 4) which acts like a conformal group on R^3:…
We propose a general definition of nonequilibrium entropy of a classical stochastic field. As an example of particular interest in cosmology we apply this definition to compute the entropy of density perturbations in an inflationary…
We propose a new mechanism to generate density perturbations in inflationary models. Spatial fluctuations in the decay rate of the inflaton field to ordinary matter lead to fluctuations in the reheating temperature. We argue that in most…
The cosmological particle production in a $k=0$ expanding de Sitter universe with a Hubble parameter $H_0$ is considered for various values of mass or conformal coupling of a free, scalar field. One finds that, for a minimally coupled field…
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…
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…
Using the dS/QFT correspondence in the context of inflation allows for the study of interesting, otherwise inaccessible physics. In particular, by studying inflation via its dual field theory at the boundary of the de Sitter space, it may…
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…
The physics of de Sitter space is essential to our understanding of our cosmological past, present, and future. It forms the foundation for the statistical predictions of inflation in terms of quantum vacuum fluctuations that are being…
Massless interacting scalar fields in de Sitter space have long been known to experience large fluctuations over length scales larger than Hubble distances. A similar situation arises in condensed matter physics in the vicinity of a…
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…
Any quantum system interacting with a complex environment undergoes decoherence. Empty space is filled with vacuum energy due to matter fields in their ground state and represents an underlying environment that any quantum particle has to…
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…
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…
We discuss the possible role of isocurvature perturbations for the quantum decoherence of the curvature perturbation during inflation. We point out that if the inflaton trajectory in field space is curved, the adiabatic mode is generically…
The notion of vacuum fluctuations of the gravitational field plays important role in cosmology. The strong variable gravitational field of the very early Universe amplifies these fluctuations and transforms them into macroscopical…