English

Quantum Entanglement in Multi-field Inflation

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2018-09-19 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We study the emergence of quantum entanglement in multi-field inflation. In this scenario, the perturbations of one field contribute to the observable curvature perturbation, while multi-field dynamics with the other fields affect the curvature perturbation through particle production and entanglement. We develop a general formalism which defines the quantum entanglement between the perturbations of the multiple fields both in the Heisenberg and Schr\"odinger pictures, and show that entanglement between different fields can arise dynamically in the context of multi-field inflationary scenarios. We also present a simple model in which a sudden change in the kinetic matrix of the scalar fields generates entanglement and an oscillatory feature appears in the power spectrum of the inflaton perturbation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1805.09448,
  title  = {Quantum Entanglement in Multi-field Inflation},
  author = {Nadia Bolis and Tomohiro Fujita and Shuntaro Mizuno and Shinji Mukohyama},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.09448},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

25 pages, 1 figure, references added

R2 v1 2026-06-23T02:06:35.875Z