Quantum initial conditions for curved inflating universes
Abstract
We discuss the challenges of motivating, constructing, and quantizing a canonically normalized inflationary perturbation in spatially curved universes. We show that this has historically proved challenging due to the interaction of nonadiabaticity with spatial curvature. We construct a novel curvature perturbation that is canonically normalized in the sense of its equation of motion and is unique up to a single scalar parameter. With this construction it becomes possible to set initial conditions invariant under canonical transformations, overcoming known ambiguities in the literature. This corrected quantization has potentially observational consequences via modifications to the primordial power spectrum at large angular scales, as well as theoretical implications for quantization procedures in curved cosmologies filled with a scalar field.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2211.17248,
title = {Quantum initial conditions for curved inflating universes},
author = {Mary I. Letey and Zakhar Shumaylov and Fruzsina J. Agocs and Will J. Handley and Michael P. Hobson and Anthony N. Lasenby},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.17248},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
15 pages, 3 figures; v3: As published in PRD