Related papers: Fluctuations about Cosmological Instantons
We study the negative modes of gravitational instantons representing vacuum decay in asymptotically flat space-time. We consider two different vacuum decay scenarios: the Coleman-de Luccia $\mathrm{O}(4)$-symmetric bubble, and…
The theory of cosmological fluctuations assumes that the pre-inflationary state of the universe was the quantum vacuum of a scalar field(s) coupled to gravity. The observed cosmic microwave background fluctuations are then interpreted as…
We develop semiclassical methods for studying bubble nucleation in models with parameters that vary slowly in time. Introducing a more general rotation of the time contour allows access to a larger set of final states, and typically a…
A correspondence between fluctuations of conformally invariant quantum fields and that of classical fields finally reducing to perfect fluid matter content is shown to exist. Previously a similar correspondence between the stress tensors…
We consider a linear Boltzmann equation that arises in a model for quantum friction. It describes a particle that is slowed down by the emission of bosons. We study the stochastic process generated by this Boltzmann equation and we show…
We study the false vacuum decay of a single scalar field $\phi$ coupled to gravity described by the Coleman-de Luccia (CdL) instanton. We show that it is possible to numerically calculate the bounce factor, which is related to the CdL…
With a modulated oscillator, we study several effects of quantum fluctuations far from thermal equilibrium. One of them is quantum heating, where quantum fluctuations lead to a finite-width distribution of a resonantly modulated oscillator…
In this work we ask what the self-consistency of a classical hydrodynamic description imposes on a quantum system. The quantum fluctuation-dissipation theorem, when read in the time domain, acts as a blurring of the fine details of the…
We clarify the properties of the behavior of classical cosmological perturbations when the Universe experiences a bounce. This is done in the simplest possible case for which gravity is described by general relativity and the matter content…
We consider a model in which the quantum fluctuation can be controlled and show that the system responds to a spatially periodic external field at zero temperature. This signifies the occurrence of spatial stochastic resonance where the…
In this note we study nonequilibrium fluctuations in gravitational algebras within de Sitter space. An essential aspect of this study is quantum measurement theory, which allows us to access the dynamical fluctuations of observables via a…
We study collisions between nearly planar domain walls including the effects of small initial nonplanar fluctuations. These perturbations represent the small fluctuations that must exist in a quantum treatment of the problem. In a previous…
Starting from the equation of motion of the quantum operator of a real scalar field phi in de Sitter space-time, a simple differential equation is derived which describes the evolution of quantum fluctuations <phi^2> of this field. Full de…
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)…
We consider the fate of AdS vacua connected by tunneling events. A precise holographic dual of thin-walled Coleman--de Luccia bounces is proposed in terms of Fubini instantons in an unstable CFT. This proposal is backed by several…
Bouncing cosmologies, while offering a compelling alternative to inflationary models, face challenges from the growth of vector perturbations during the contracting phase. While linear vector instabilities can be avoided with specific…
We compute thermal and quantum fluctuations in the background of a domain wall in a scalar field theory at finite temperature using the exact scalar propagator in the subspace orthogonal to the wall's translational mode. The propagator…
We investigate the negative modes about Coleman-De Luccia bounces governing vacuum transitions in de Sitter space, with the goal of gaining physical insight into the various anomalous results associated with these that have been reported in…
We discuss predictions for cosmology which result from the scaling solution of functional flow equations for a quantum field theory of gravity. A scaling solution is necessary to render quantum gravity renormalizable. Our scaling solution…
We study the evolution of cosmological fluctuations during and after inflation driven by a scalar field coupled to a perfect fluid through afriction term. During the slow-roll regime for the scalar field, the perfect fluid is also frozen…