Related papers: Inflaton Decay in an Alpha Vacuum
The inflaton field responsible for inflation may not be a canonical fundamental scalar. It is possible that the inflaton is a composite of fermions or it may have a decay width. In these cases the standard procedure for calculating the…
We explore the question of how to probe the vacuum structure of space time by a massive scalar field through interaction with background gravitons. Using the $\Gamma$-regularization for the in-/out-state formalism, we find the effective…
We discuss the production of radiation and dark matter assuming a time-dependent inflaton decay rate during the reheating period. It is shown that the time dependence of the inflaton decay rate can substantially modify the reheating…
Metastable states decay at zero temperature through quantum tunneling at an exponentially small rate, which depends on the Coleman-de Luccia instanton, also known as bounce. In some theories, the bounce may not exist or its on-shell action…
We apply the S-matrix formalism developed in Part I to the interacting scalar theory in four-dimensional de Sitter spacetime. The amplitudes are computed in the angular momentum basis, appropriate to the representations of $SO(1,4)$ de…
We demonstrate that the leading and next-to-leading finite-volume effects in the evaluation of leptonic decay widths of pseudoscalar mesons at $O(\alpha)$ are universal, i.e. they are independent of the structure of the meson. This is…
We consider scalar field theory in de Sitter space with a general vacuum invariant under the continuously connected symmetries of the de Sitter group. We begin by reviewing approaches to define this as a perturbative quantum field theory.…
We present a gauge invariant formalism to study the evolution of curvature perturbations during decay of the inflaton or some other field that dominates the energy density. We specialize to the case where the total curvature perturbation…
It is shown that the efficiency of the universe heating by an inflaton field depends not only on the possible presence of parametric resonance in the production of scalar particles but also strongly depends on the character of the inflaton…
We study the decay of the false vacuum in the regime where the quantum field theory analysis is not valid, since gravitational effects become important. This happens when the height of the barrier separating the false and the true vacuum is…
We derive evolution and constraint equations for second order perturbations of flat dust homogeneous and isotropic solutions to the Einstein field equations using all scalar, vector and tensor perturbation modes. We show that the…
We consider an infrared truncated massless minimally coupled scalar field with a quartic self-interaction in the locally de Sitter background of an inflating universe. We compute the two-point correlation function of the scalar at one and…
We address the problem of studying the decay of the inflaton field $\phi$ to another scalar field $\chi$ through parametric resonance in the case of a coupling that involves several decay modes. This amounts to the presence of extra…
We investigate infrared dynamics of four-dimensional Einstein gravity in de Sitter space. We set up a general framework to investigate dynamical scaling relations in quantum/classical gravitational theories. The conformal mode dependence of…
A recent analysis of the false-vacuum decay in non-perturbative regimes is here extended in the presence of Einstein gravity, computing the corresponding effective potential and decay rate. We consider a $\lambda \phi^4$ scalar field theory…
The effective equation of motion is derived for a scalar field interacting with other fields in a Friedman-Robertson-Walker background space-time. The dissipative behavior reflected in this effective evolution equation is studied both in…
The physics of the inflationary universe requires the study of the out of equilibrium evolution of quantum fields in curved spacetime. We present the evolution for both the geometry and the matter (described by the quantum inflaton field)…
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…
We investigate the divergent perturbative series of correlation functions for a massless, self-interacting scalar field in de Sitter space. First, we use our previously proposed method of autonomous equations to obtain finite time-dependent…
Quantum fluctuations of an inflaton field, slow-rolling during inflation are coupled to metric fluctuations. In conventional four dimensional cosmology one can calculate the effect of scalar metric perturbations as slow-roll corrections to…