Entangled states as a probe of early universe history: a Higgs case study

Abstract

I explore whether distinguishing features of phase transitions and/or the inflationary energy scale can be imprinted on cosmological observables due to entanglement during inflation, given a spectator scalar field with a Higgs-like potential. As a consequence of this analysis, I also present results that illustrate the variety of features a Higgs-like spectator can imprint on the primordial power spectrum due to entanglement, as well as how easy it might be to distinguish such spectra from other similar scalar field results at the level of CMB residuals. I utilize the technical framework for dynamically generated entangled states developed in ( arXiv:2211.11079 [hep-th] , arXiv:2104.13410 [hep-th] ) to obtain my results.

34 pages, 15 figures, 2 appendices. V2: Final version accepted for publication in JCAP. Changes: 1 appendix added and minor clarifications to the presentation. My results and conclusions are unchanged

References in corpus (7)

• Inflationary Cosmology
• Eternal inflation and its implications
• Improved limits on the tensor-to-scalar ratio using BICEP and Planck
• Cosmological Consequences of Initial State Entanglement
• A New Approach to Electroweak Symmetry Non-Restoration
• Entanglement masquerading in the CMB
• Does Planck Actually "See" the Bunch-Davies State?