Related papers: Universal Correction to the Inflationary Vacuum
Chain Inflation is an alternative to slow roll inflation in which the universe undergoes a series of transitions between different vacua. The density perturbations (studied in this paper) are seeded by the probabilistic nature of tunneling…
We present a calculation of the power spectrum generated in a classically symmetry-breaking O(N) scalar field through inflationary quantum fluctuations, using the large-N limit. The effective potential of the theory in de Sitter space is…
We compute the one loop fermion self-energy for massless Dirac + Einstein in the presence of a locally de Sitter background. We employ dimensional regularization and obtain a fully renormalized result by absorbing all divergences with BPHZ…
We compute the cosmological perturbations generated in the brane world inflation driven by the bulk inflaton. Different from the model that the inflation is a brane effect, we exhibit the modification of the power spectrum of scalar…
Inflation is most often described using quantum field theory (QFT) on a fixed, curved spacetime background. Such a description is valid only if the spatial volume of the region considered is so large that its size and shape moduli behave…
The Wheeler--DeWitt equation for a flat and compact Friedmann--Lema\^{i}tre--Robertson--Walker cosmology at the pre-inflation epoch is studied in the contexts of the standard and fractional quantum cosmology. Working within the…
The precise physical mechanism describing the emergence of the seeds of cosmic structure from a perfect isotropic and homogeneous universe has not been fully explained by the standard version of inflationary models. To handle this…
We present detailed calculations for quantum-gravitational corrections to the power spectra of gauge-invariant scalar and tensor perturbations during inflation. This is done by performing a semiclassical Born-Oppenheimer type of…
We treat a model in which tensor perturbations of de~Sitter spacetime, represented as a spatially flat model, are modified by the effects of the vacuum fluctuations of a massless conformally invariant field, such as the electromagnetic…
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…
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…
The quantum cosmology of the flat Friedmann-Lema{\^i}tre-Robertson-Walker Universe, filled with a scalar field, is considered in the de Broglie-Bohm (dBB) interpretation framework. A stiff-matter quantum bounce solution is obtained. The…
We argue that, under certain plausible assumptions, de Sitter space settles into a quiescent vacuum in which there are no dynamical quantum fluctuations. Such fluctuations require either an evolving microstate, or time-dependent histories…
We consider the quasi-de Sitter geometry of the inflationary universe. We calculate the energy flux of the slowly rolling background scalar field through the quasi-de Sitter apparent horizon and set it equal to the change of the entropy…
We calculate the time evolution of the expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor for a minimally-coupled massless scalar field in cosmological spacetimes, with an application to dark energy in mind. We first study the evolution from…
We show that deviations of the quantum state of the inflaton from the thermal vacuum of inflation may leave an imprint in the CMB anisotropies. The quantum dynamics of the inflaton in such a state produces corrections to the inflationary…
It is shown that the de Sitter state is invariant with respect to Wick rotation. In imaginary time, super- horizon quantum and classical metric fluctuations of the empty FLRW space (with no matter fields) form a self-consistent de Sitter…
Using a purely kinematical argument, the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) theorem states that any maximal space-time with average positive expansion is geodesically incomplete, hence past eternal inflation would be necessarily singular. Recently,…
The simplest single-field inflation models capture all the relevant contributions to the patterns in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) observed today. A key assumption in these models is that the quantum inflationary fluctuations that…
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)…