Jason Pollack (UBC) “Decoherence and Slow-Roll Eternal Inflation”

Seminar Organizer


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Slow-roll inflation can become eternal if the quantum variance of the inflaton field around its slowly rolling classical trajectory is converted into a distribution of classical spacetimes inflating at different rates, and if the variance is large enough compared to the rate of classical rolling that the probability of an increased rate of expansion is sufficiently high. Both of these criteria depend sensitively on whether and how perturbation modes of the inflaton interact and decohere. I will present perturbative evidence that decoherence of long-wavelength inflaton modes indeed leads to an ensemble of classical spacetimes with differing cosmological evolutions.