A field theory approach to cosmological density perturbations

We investigate gauge invariant cosmological perturbations in a spatially flat Friedman-Robertson-Walker universe with scalar fields. It is well known that the evolution equation for the gauge invariant quantities has exact solutions in the long-wavelength limit. We find that these gauge invariant solutions can be obtained by differentiating the background solution with respect to parameters contained in the background system. This method is very useful when we analyze the lon...

The mechanism of the initial inflation of the universe is based on gravitationally coupled scalar fields $\phi$. Various scenarios are distinguished by the choice of an {\it effective self--interaction potential} $U(\phi)$ which simulates a {\it temporarily} non--vanishing {\em cosmological term}. Using the Hubble expansion parameter $H$ as a new ``time" coordinate, we can formally derive the {\it general} Robertson--Walker metric for a {\em spatially flat} cosmos. Our new me...

A surprising exact result for the Einstein Field Equations is that if pressure-free matter is moving in a shear-free way, then it must be either expansion-free or rotation-free. It has been suggested this result is also true for any barotropic perfect fluid, but a proof has remained elusive. We consider the case of barotropic perfect fluid solutions linearized about a Robertson-Walker geometry, and prove that the result remains true except for the case of a specific highly no...

Using the existence of a covariant conserved quantity on large perturbation scales in a spatially flat perfect fluid or scalar field universe, we present a general formula for gauge-invariantly defined comoving energy density perturbations which encodes the entire linear perturbation dynamics in a closed time integral. On this basis we discuss perturbation modes in different cosmological epochs.

An improved method is given for the computation of the stress-energy tensor of a quantized scalar field using adiabatic regularization. The method works for fields with arbitrary mass and curvature coupling in Robertson-Walker spacetimes and is particularly useful for spacetimes with compact spatial sections. For massless fields it yields an analytic approximation for the stress-energy tensor that is similar in nature to those obtained previously for massless fields in static...

We study the dynamics of spatially homogeneous and isotropic spacetimes containing a fluid undergoing microscopic velocity diffusion in a cosmological scalar field. After deriving a few exact solutions of the equations, we continue by analyzing the qualitative behavior of general solutions. To this purpose we recast the equations in the form of a two dimensional dynamical system and perform a global analysis of the flow. Among the admissible behaviors, we find solutions that ...

We consider that the cosmological constant is associated with the vacuum energy density of a particle physics model. In the path integral formalism of euclidean quantum gravity and in the background of the Robertson Walker metric we calculate only the contribution of the matter density to the fluctuating metric. This produces an effective term in the action that acts as a correction to the vacuum energy density of the matter. The method leads to the observed cosmological cons...

In many cases a massive nonlinear scalar field can lead to accelerated expansion in cosmological models. This paper contains mathematical results on this subject for flat Robertson-Walker space-time. Global existence to the coupled Einstein-massive scalar field system which rules the dynamics of a kind of pure matter in the presence of a massive scalar field and cosmological constant is proved, under the assumption that the scalar field ? is a non-decreasing function, in Robe...

Prompted by the recent more precise determination of the basic cosmological parameters and growing evidence that the matter-energy content of the universe is now dominated by dark energy and dark matter we present the general solution of the equation that describes the evolution of density perturbations in the linear approximation. It turns out that as in the standard CDM model the density perturbations grow very slowly during the radiation dominated epoch and their amplitude...

We discuss second-order cosmological perturbations on super-Hubble scales, in a scalar field dominated universe, such as during single field inflation. In this contest we show that the gauge-invariant curvature perturbations defined on uniform density and comoving hypersurfaces coincide and that perturbations are adiabatic in the large scale limit. Since it has been recently shown that the uniform density curvature perturbation is conserved on large scales if perturbations ar...