Inflaton decay in an alpha vacuum

Journal Article · Tue Mar 15 04:00:00 EST 2005 · Physical Review. D, Particles Fields

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.71.064026· OSTI ID:20708903

Naidu, S; Holman, R ^[1]

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1. Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania 15213 (United States)

We study the alpha vacua of de Sitter space by considering the decay rate of the inflaton field coupled to a scalar field placed in an alpha vacuum. We find an alpha dependent Bose enhancement relative to the Bunch-Davies vacuum and, surprisingly, no nonrenormalizable divergences. We also consider a modified alpha dependent time-ordering prescription for the Feynman propagator and show that it leads to an alpha independent result. This result suggests that it may be possible to calculate in any alpha vacuum if we employ the appropriate causality preserving prescription.

• OSTI ID: 20708903
• Journal Information: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Journal Name: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields Journal Issue: 6 Vol. 71; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
CAUSALITY
COSMOLOGY
DE SITTER GROUP
DECAY
PROPAGATOR
QUANTUM FIELD THEORY
SCALAR FIELDS