Spinodal decomposition and inflation: Dynamics and metric perturbations
- Institute for Physics, University of Dortmund, D-44221 Dortmund, (Germany)
- Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213 (United States)
We analyze the dynamics of spinodal decomposition in inflationary cosmology using the closed time path formalism of out of equilibrium quantum field theory combined with the non-perturbative Hartree approximation. In addition to a general analysis, we compute the detailed evolution of two inflationary models of particular importance: {lambda}{phi}{sup 4} new inflation and natural inflation. We compute the metric fluctuations resulting from inflationary phase transitions in the slow roll approximation, showing that there exists a regime for which quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field result in a significant deviation in the predictions of the spectrum of primordial density perturbations from standard results. We provide case examples for which a blue tilt to the power spectrum (i.e. n{sub s}>1) results from the evolution of a single inflaton field, and demonstrate that field fluctuations may result in a scalar amplitude of fluctuations significantly below standard predictions, resulting in a slight alleviation of the inflationary fine-tuning problem. We show explicitly that the metric perturbation spectrum resulting from inflation depends upon the state at the outset of the inflationary phase. (c) 2000 The American Physical Society.
- OSTI ID:
- 20217151
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Vol. 62, Issue 2; Other Information: PBD: 15 Jul 2000; ISSN 0556-2821
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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