相关论文: Quantum Primordial Standard Clocks
Inflation models are compared with observation on the assumption that the curvature perturbation is generated from the vacuum fluctuation of the inflaton field. The focus is on single-field models with canonical kinetic terms, classified as…
Although the paradigm of inflation has been extensively studied to demonstrate how macroscopic inhomogeneities in our universe originate from quantum fluctuations, most of the established literature ignores the crucial role that…
Upcoming searches for the stochastic background of inflationary gravitational waves (GWs) offer the exciting possibility to probe the evolution of our Universe prior to Big Bang nucleosynthesis. In this spirit, we explore the sensitivity of…
We propose a new model-independent mechanism for producing primordial black holes from a period of multi-field inflation. This requires an enhancement of primordial fluctuations at short scales compared to their value at CMB scales. We show…
It is sometimes argued that observation of tensor modes from inflation would provide the first evidence for quantum gravity. However, in the usual inflationary formalism, also the scalar modes involve quantised metric perturbations. We…
Stochastic effects in generic scenarios of inflation with multiple fields are investigated. First passage time techniques are employed to calculate the statistical moments of the number of inflationary $e$-folds, which give rise to all…
It is proposed that if quantum states of space-time are coherent on null surfaces, holographic Planck-scale fluctuations of inflationary horizons dominate the formation of primordial scalar curvature perturbations. It is shown that the…
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)…
This paper focuses on the search for a coherent and consistent formulation to describe quantum gravity corrections to Quantum Field Theory. We implement two fundamental ingredients discussed in previous analyses: on one hand, the…
The inflationary scenario for the brane world driven by the bulk inflaton is proposed. The quantum fluctuations of the inflaton is calculated and compared to those of the conventional 4-dimensional inflationary scenario. It is shown that…
A recent variant of the inflationary paradigm is that the ``primordial'' curvature perturbations come from quantum fluctuations of a scalar field, subdominant and effectively massless during inflation, called the ``curvaton'', instead of…
In this work we study how quantum fluctuations modify the quantum evolution of an initially classical field theory. We consider a scalar $\phi^4$ theory coupled to an external source as a toy model for the Color Glass Condensate description…
We consider the effects of the quantum stress tensor fluctuations of a conformal field in generating gravity waves in inflationary models. We find a non-scale invariant, non-Gaussian contribution which depends upon the total expansion…
In classical physics, clocks are open dissipative systems driven from thermal equilibrium and necessarily subject to thermal noise. We describe a quantum clock driven by entropy reduction through measurement. The mechanism consists of a…
Quantum diffusion describes the inflow of vacuum quantum fluctuations as they get amplified by gravitational instability, and stretched to large distances during inflation. In this picture, the dynamics of the universe's expansion becomes…
This pedagogical review aims at presenting the fundamental aspects of the theory of inflationary cosmological perturbations of quantum-mechanical origin. The analogy with the well-known Schwinger effect is discussed in detail and a…
Primordial fluctuations in inflationary cosmology acquire classical properties through decoherence when their wavelengths become larger than the Hubble scale. Although decoherence is effective, it is not complete, so a significant part of…
The Higgs field is an attractive candidate for the inflaton because it is an observationally confirmed fundamental scalar field. Importantly, it can be modeled by the most general renormalizable scalar potential. However, if the classical…
It is widely accepted that the Universe underwent a period of thermal equilibrium at very early times. One expects a residue of this primordial state to be imprinted on the large scale structure of space time. In this paper we study the…
During inflation explicit perturbative computations of quantum field theories which contain massless, non-conformal fields exhibit secular effects that grow as powers of the logarithm of the inflationary scale factor. Starobinski\u{\i}'s…