Onset of inflation amid backreaction from inhomogeneities
Name
PhysRevD.100.063512.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
3.78 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
451045124949673fdede1dd9a092d6c4
Author(s)
Bloomfield, Jolyon K.
Fitzpatrick, Patrick
Hilbert, Kiriakos
Kaiser, David I.
Date Issued
September 13, 2019
Journal
Physical review. D
Publisher
American Physical Society (APS)
Citation
Bloomfield, Jolyon K. et al. "Onset of inflation amid backreaction from inhomogeneities." Physical review. D 100 (2019): 063512 © 2019 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We analyze the onset of inflation for a simple single-field model when the system begins with significant inhomogeneities on length scales shorter than the initial Hubble radius. We incorporate certain nonlinear interactions among the coupled degrees of freedom by using the nonperturbative Hartree approximation. Consistent with recent, more computationally intensive numerical-relativity studies, we find inflation to be robust for large-field models, even when the system begins with significant structure on sub-Hubble scales. We consider the space of initial conditions (φ(t0),φ(t0)), where φ is the vacuum expectation value of the quantized field that drives inflation. Although some regions of (φ(t0),φ(t0)) that would have yielded sufficient inflation in the absence of inhomogeneities fail to do so when backreaction from inhomogeneities is incorporated, an equal volume of such regions succeeds in producing sufficient inflation which did not do so in the absence of inhomogeneities. For large-field models, in other words, the total volume of the space of initial conditions (φ(t0),φ(t0)) that yields sufficient inflation is conserved when we incorporate nonlinear backreaction from inhomogeneities, compared to the case in which inhomogeneities are neglected.
Subjects
Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.100.063512
