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Title: The quantum Fokker-Planck equation of stochastic inflation

Journal Article · · Journal of High Energy Physics (Online)
 [1];  [2];  [1]
  1. Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA (United States). Dept. of Physics
  2. Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA (United States). Dept. of Physics; Minerva Schools at KGI, San Francisco, CA (United States). College of Computational Sciences

We derive the stochastic description of a massless, interacting scalar field in de Sitter space directly from the quantum theory. This is done by showing that the density matrix for the effective theory of the long wavelength fluctuations of the field obeys a quantum version of the Fokker-Planck equation. This equation has a simple connection with the standard Fokker-Planck equation of the classical stochastic theory, which can be generalised to any order in perturbation theory. We illustrate this formalism in detail for the theory of a massless scalar field with a quartic interaction.

Research Organization:
Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
FG02-91ER40682
OSTI ID:
1507422
Journal Information:
Journal of High Energy Physics (Online), Vol. 2017, Issue 11; ISSN 1029-8479
Publisher:
Springer BerlinCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 16 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Two loop stress-energy tensor for inflationary scalar electrodynamics journal August 2008

Cited By (3)

Inflationary stochastic anomalies journal March 2019
Statistical nature of infrared dynamics on de Sitter background journal February 2018
Inflationary stochastic anomalies text January 2018

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