A radiation-like era before inflation

Abstract

We show that the semiclassical approximation to the Wheeler-DeWitt equation for the minisuperspace of a minimally coupled scalar field in the spatially flat de Sitter Universe prompts the existence of an initial power-law evolution driven by non-adiabatic terms from the gravitational wavefunction which act like radiation. This simple model hence describes the onset of inflation from a previous radiation-like expansion during which the cosmological constant is already present but subleading.

LaTeX, 8 pages, no figures; final version to be published in JCAP

References in corpus (6)

• The Classical Universes of the No-Boundary Quantum State
• Stable Isotropic Cosmological Singularities in Quadratic Gravity
• Higher Powers in Gravitation
• The Boundedness of Euclidean Gravity and the Wavefunction of the Universe
• Inflation and the semiclassical dynamics of a conformal scalar field
• Hints of (trans-Planckian) asymptotic freedom in semiclassical cosmology