A field theory approach to cosmological density perturbations

We explore the adiabatic particle excitations of an interacting field in a cosmological background. By following the time-evolution of the quantum state corresponding to the particle excitation, we show how the basic properties characterizing the particle propagation can be recovered from the two-point propagators. As an application, we study the background-induced dissipative effects on the propagation of a two-level atom in an expanding universe.

The density perturbations generated when the inflaton decay rate is perturbed by a light scalar field $\chi$ are studied. By explicitly solving the perturbation equations for the system of two scalar fields and radiation, we show that even in low energy-scale inflation nearly scale-invariant spectra of scalar perturbations with an amplitude set by observations are obtained through the conversion of $\chi$ fluctuations into adiabatic density perturbations. We demonstrate that ...

In the context of f(R) theories of gravity, we study the cosmological evolution of scalar perturbations by using a completely general procedure. We find that the exact fourth-order differential equation for the matter density perturbations in the longitudinal gauge, reduces to a second-order equation for sub-Hubble modes. This simplification is compared with the standard (quasi-static) equation used in the literature. We show that for general f(R) functions the quasi-static a...

We give a pedagogical review of a covariant and fully non-perturbative approach to study nonlinear perturbations in cosmology. In the first part, devoted to cosmological fluids, we define a nonlinear extension of the uniform-density curvature perturbation and derive its evolution equation. In the second part, we focus our attention on multiple scalar fields and present a nonlinear description in terms of adiabatic and entropy perturbations. In both cases, we show how the form...

We show that a dynamical spacetime generates entanglement between modes of a quantum field. Conversely, the entanglement encodes information concerning the underlying spacetime structure, which hints at the prospect of applications of this observation to cosmology. Here we illustrate this point by way of an analytically exactly soluble example, that of a scalar quantum field on a two-dimensional asymptotically flat Robertson-Walker expanding spacetime. We explicitly calculate...

A scale-dependent cosmology is proposed in which the Robertson-Walker metric and the Einstein equation are modified in such a way that $\Omega_0$, $H_0$ and the age of the Universe all become scale-dependent. Its implications on the observational cosmology are discussed.

See hep-ph/0304045

We study the 2nd-order scalar, vector and tensor metric perturbations in Robertson-Walker (RW) spacetime in synchronous coordinates during the radiation dominated (RD) stage. The dominant radiation is modeled by a relativistic fluid described by a stress tensor $T_{\mu\nu}=(\rho+p)U_\mu U_\nu+g_{\mu\nu}p$ with $p= c^2_s \rho$, and the 1st-order velocity is assumed to be curlless. We analyze the solutions of 1st-order perturbations, upon which the solutions of 2nd-order pertur...

In this paper we study the effects of including anisotropic scaling invariance in the minisuperspace Lagrangian for a universe modelled by the Friedman-Robertson-Walker metric, a massless scalar field and cosmological constant. We find that canonical quantization of this system leads to a Schroedinger type equation, thus avoiding the frozen time problem of the usual Wheeler-DeWitt equation. Furthermore, we find numerical solutions for the classical equations of motion, and we...

We compute the leading order contribution to the stress-energy tensor corresponding to the modes of a quantum scalar field propagating in a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe with arbitrary coupling to the scalar curvature, whose exact mode functions can be expanded as an infinite adiabatic series. While for a massive field this is a good approximation for all modes when the mass of the field m is larger than the Hubble parameter H, for a massless field only the subhorizon m...