Open quantum cosmological system

Sarah Shandera, Nishant Agarwal, Archana Kamal

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

36 Scopus citations

Abstract

We derive the evolution equation for the density matrix of a UV- and IR- limited band of comoving momentum modes of the canonically normalized scalar degree of freedom in two examples of nearly de Sitter universes. Including the effects of a cubic interaction term from the gravitational action and tracing out a set of longer wavelength modes, we find that the evolution of the system is non-Hamiltonian and non-Markovian. We find linear dissipation terms for a few modes with wavelength near the boundary between system and bath, and nonlinear dissipation terms for all modes. The non-Hamiltonian terms in the evolution equation persist to late times when the scalar field dynamics is such that the curvature perturbation continues to evolve on super-Hubble scales.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number083535
JournalPhysical Review D
Volume98
Issue number8
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 15 2018

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Open quantum cosmological system'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this