The Inflationary Wavefunction and its Initial Conditions

Abstract

We explore the effect of initial conditions on the inflationary wavefunction and their consequences for the observed spectrum of primordial fluctuations. In a class of models with a sudden transition into inflation we find that, for a reasonable set of assumptions about the reheat temperature and the number of e-foldings, it is possible for initial conditions set by a pre-inflationary epoch to have an observable effect.

17 pages, 1 figure, numerical example and analysis thereof added in this version

References in corpus (3)

• Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation
• Three Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Polarization Analysis
• Harmonic oscillator with time-dependent effective-mass and frequency with a possible application to 'chirped tidal' gravitational waves forces affecting interferometric detectors

Cited by in corpus (17)

• Non-Gaussianity from Excited Initial Inflationary States
• Non-Gaussianity Consistency Relations, Initial States and Back-reaction
• Cosmological Consequences of Initial State Entanglement
• Fossilized Gravitational Wave Relic and Primordial Clocks
• Bounds on non-adiabatic evolution in single-field inflation
• Modifications to Cosmological Power Spectra from Scalar-Tensor Entanglement and their Observational Consequences
• The scale-dependent signature of primordial non-Gaussianity in the large-scale structure of cosmic reionization
• Enhanced local-type inflationary trispectrum from a non-vacuum initial state
• On the position dependent effective mass Hamiltonian
• Dynamics of free time-dependent effective mass
• Rapid numerical solutions for the Mukhanov-Sasaki equation
• Quantum Entanglement in Multi-field Inflation
• Pre-big bang geometric extensions of inflationary cosmologies
• On primordial equation of state transitions
• Does Planck Actually "See" the Bunch-Davies State?
• Analytic Approximations for the Primordial Power Spectrum with Israel Junction Conditions
• An upper bound on the reheat temperature for short duration inflation