Decoherence from isocurvature perturbations in inflation

and

Published 28 November 2007 IOP Publishing Ltd
, , Citation Tomislav Prokopec and Gerasimos I Rigopoulos JCAP11(2007)029 DOI 10.1088/1475-7516/2007/11/029

1475-7516/2007/11/029

Abstract

We discuss the possible role of isocurvature perturbations for the quantum decoherence of the curvature perturbation during inflation. We point out that if the inflaton trajectory in field space is curved, the adiabatic mode is generically coupled to the isocurvature mode and thus tracing out the latter can cause the curvature perturbation to decohere. We explicitly investigate this suggestion in a model of inflation with two decoupled massive fields and find that decoherence is effective for a wide range of mass ratios. In particular, we calculate the entanglement entropy for this model and show that it grows after horizon exit, providing a quantitative measure for decoherence.

Export citation and abstract BibTeX RIS

10.1088/1475-7516/2007/11/029