Vacuum Choices and the Predictions of Inflation
arXiv:hep-th/0303103 · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2003/12/006
Abstract
In the presence of a short-distance cutoff, the choice of a vacuum state in an inflating, non-de Sitter universe is unavoidably ambiguous. The ambiguity is related to the time at which initial conditions for the mode functions are specified and to the way the expansion of the universe affects those initial conditions. In this paper we study the imprint of these uncertainties on the predictions of inflation. We parametrize the most general set of possible vacuum initial conditions by two phenomenological variables. We find that the generated power spectrum receives oscillatory corrections whose amplitude is proportional to the Hubble parameter over the cutoff scale. In order to further constrain the phenomenological parameters that characterize the vacuum definition, we study gravitational particle production during different cosmological epochs.
10 two-column pages, 1 figure; uses RevTeX4
References in corpus (17)
- First Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Determination of Cosmological Parameters
- Reconstructing the primordial power spectrum
- Are Inflationary Predictions Sensitive to Very High Energy Physics?
- Initial Conditions for Inflation
- Interacting Quantum Field Theory in de Sitter Vacua
- Joint CMB and Weak Lensing Analysis; Physically Motivated Constraints on Cosmological Parameters
- Cosmological Perturbations from a New-Physics Hypersurface
- On the consistency of de Sitter vacua
- WMAP and Inflation
- de Sitter Vacua, Renormalization and Locality
- Effective Field Theories and Inflation
- A note on alpha-vacua and interacting field theory in de Sitter space
- Initial state effects on the cosmic microwave background and trans-planckian physics
- Can MAP and Planck map Planck physics?
- Trans-Planckian footprints in inflationary cosmology
- Constraining Cut-off Physics in the Cosmic Microwave Background
- Large mixing angles for neutrinos from infrared fixed points
Cited by in corpus (42)
- Inflation after WMAP3: Confronting the Slow-Roll and Exact Power Spectra with CMB Data
- Superimposed Oscillations in the WMAP Data?
- Cosmological Particle Production: A Review
- Exploring the Superimposed Oscillations Parameter Space
- Inflation after Planck: Judgment Day
- Squeezed States in the de Sitter Vacuum
- Initial state of matter fields and trans-Planckian physics: Can CMB observations disentangle the two?
- Towards a reliable effective field theory of inflation
- Primordial backgrounds of relic gravitons
- Baryogenesis, Primordial Black Holes and MHz-GHz Gravitational Waves
- Inflationary Perturbations from Deformed CFT
- Palatini formulation of the modified gravity with an additionally squared scalar curvature term
- Bayesian inflationary reconstructions from Planck 2018 data
- Trans-Planckian wimpzillas
- Alleviating the cosmological constant problem from particle production
- Primordial Black Holes With Multi-Modal Mass Spectra
- Observing Trans-Planckian Signatures in the Cosmic Microwave Background
- Primordial Perturbations in Einstein-Aether and BPSH Theories
- Minimal Theoretical Uncertainties in Inflationary Predictions
- Novel quantum initial conditions for inflation
- Constraining the kinetically dominated Universe
- Holographic bounds on the UV cutoff scale in inflationary cosmology
- Constraining Cut-off Physics in the Cosmic Microwave Background
- Scale-dependent power spectrum from initial excited-de Sitter modes
- Non-Linear Trans-Planckian Corrections of Spectra due to the Non-trivial Initial States
- Where does Cosmological Perturbation Theory Break Down?
- Dynamical Properties of the Mukhanov-Sasaki Hamiltonian in the context of adiabatic vacua and the Lewis-Riesenfeld invariant
- Erratum: Statistical anisotropy in the inflationary universe
- An Asymptotic Method for Selection of Inflationary Modes
- Scale Invariant Spectrum from Variable Speed of Light Metric in a Bimetric Gravity Theory
- Particle Creation and Excited-de Sitter Modes
- Short Distance Physics and Initial State Effects on the CMB Power Spectrum
- Quantum initial conditions for inflation and canonical invariance
- Rapid numerical solutions for the Mukhanov-Sasaki equation
- Enhanced spectrum of primordial perturbations, galaxy formation and small scale structure
- A general condition of inflationary cosmology on trans-Planckian physics
- Hints of (trans-Planckian) asymptotic freedom in semiclassical cosmology
- Refining the nonlinear modelling of primordial oscillatory features
- Bounding f(R,T) gravity by particle creation
- Which part of the stress-energy tensor gravitates?
- Transplanckian signatures in WMAP3?
- Evaluation of the cosmological constant in inflation with a massive non-minimal scalar field