We propose a solution to the quantum measurement problem in inflation. Our model treats Fourier modes of cosmological perturbations as analogous to particles in a weakly interacting Bose gas. We generalize the idea of a macroscopic wave function to cosmological fields, and construct a self-interaction Hamiltonian that focuses that wave function. By appropriately setting the coupling between modes, we obtain the standard adiabatic, scale-invariant power spectrum. Because of central limit theorem, we recover a Gaussian random field, consistent with observations.
We propose a solution to the quantum measurement problem in inflation. Our model treats Fourier modes of cosmological perturbations as analogous to particles in a weakly interacting Bose gas. We generalize the idea of a macroscopic wave function to cosmological fields, and construct a self-interaction Hamiltonian that focuses that wave function. By appropriately setting the coupling between modes, we obtain the standard adiabatic, scale-invariant power spectrum. Because of central limit theorem, we recover a Gaussian random field, consistent with observations.
According to cosmological inflation, the inhomogeneities in our Universe are of quantum-mechanical origin. This scenario is phenomenologically very appealing as it solves the puzzles of the standard hot big bang model and naturally explains why the spectrum of cosmological perturbations is almost scale invariant. It is also an ideal playground to discuss deep questions among which is the quantum measurement problem in a cosmological context. Although the large squeezing of the quantum state of the perturbations and the phenomenon of decoherence explain many aspects of the quantum-to-classical transition, it remains to understand how a specific outcome can be produced in the early Universe, in the absence of any observer. The continuous spontaneous localization (CSL) approach to quantum mechanics attempts to solve the quantum measurement question in a general context. In this framework, the wave function collapse is caused by adding new nonlinear and stochastic terms to the Schr\"odinger equation. In this paper, we apply this theory to inflation, which amounts to solving the CSL parametric oscillator case. We choose the wave function collapse to occur on an eigenstate of the Mukhanov-Sasaki variable and discuss the corresponding modified Schr\"odinger equation. Then, we compute the power spectrum of the perturbations and show that it acquires a universal shape with two branches, one which remains scale invariant and one with nS=4, a spectral index in obvious contradiction with the cosmic microwave background anisotropy observations. The requirement that the non-scale-invariant part be outside the observational window puts stringent constraints on the parameter controlling the deviations from ordinary quantum mechanics. Due to the absence of a CSL amplification mechanism in field theory, this also has the consequence that the collapse mechanism of the inflationary fluctuations is not efficient. Then, we determine the collapse time. On small scales the collapse is almost instantaneous, and we recover exactly the behavior of the CSL harmonic oscillator (a case for which we present new results), whereas, on large scales, we find that the collapse is delayed and can take several e-folds to happen. We conclude that recovering the observational successes of inflation and, at the same time, reaching a satisfactory resolution of the inflationary ``macro-objectification'' issue seems problematic in the framework considered here. This work also provides a complete solution to the CSL parametric oscillator system, a topic we suggest could play a very important role to further constrain the CSL parameters. Our results illustrate the remarkable power of inflation and cosmology to constrain new physics.
We consider the eternal inflation scenario of the slow-roll/chaotic type with the additional element of an objective collapse of the wave function. The incorporation of this new agent to the traditional inflationary setting might represent a possible solution to the quantum measurement problem during inflation, a subject that has not reached a consensus among the community. Specifically, it could provide an explanation for the generation of the primordial anisotropies and inhomogeneities, starting from a perfectly symmetric background and invoking symmetric dynamics. We adopt the continuous spontaneous localization model, in the context of inflation, as the dynamical reduction mechanism that generates the primordial inhomogeneities. Furthermore, when enforcing the objective reduction mechanism, the condition for eternal inflation can be bypassed. In particular, the collapse mechanism incites the wave function, corresponding to the inflaton, to localize itself around the zero mode of the field. Then the zero mode will evolve essentially unperturbed, driving inflation to an end in any region of the Universe where inflation occurred. Also, our approach achieves a primordial spectrum with an amplitude and shape consistent with the one that best fits the observational data.
Inflation is the standard scenario for the Early Universe providing
a mechanism to explain the generation of primordial density perturbations
from which all the structures we see in the universe formed by subsequent
gravitational growth (like, e.g., anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave
Background, or the large-scale distribution of galaxies). The inflationary
seeds for structure formation are traced back to quantum fluctuations
of one or more (scalar) fields. However galaxies or cluster of galaxies
do behave as classical objects. This entails the issue of understanding
a quantum-to-classical transition in a cosmological framework. From
this point of view inflation and cosmological observations can represent
an interesting laboratory to explore some issues related to the quantum
measurement problem. This issue has been long known, still it has
been not explored in full details, and recently there has been a renowned
interest in it. The thesis will consist in a first part of review
of the most recent studies on the subject. It will then focus on some
aspects of the problem, namely how the classical to quantum transition
impacts on primordial gravitational waves which are a smoking gun
of inflation, and whether and how such a transition can leave specific
signatures in cosmological observables that go beyond the usual analyses
(such as, e.g., non-Gaussianity of the cosmological perturbations
from inflation).
Inflation solves several cosmological problems at the classical and quantum level, with a strong agreement between the theoretical predictions of well-motivated inflationary models and observations. In this Letter, we study the corrections induced by dynamical collapse models, which phenomenologically solve the quantum measurement problem, to the power spectrum of the comoving curvature perturbation during inflation and the radiation-dominated era. We find that the corrections are strongly negligible for the reference values of the collapse parameters.
We show that inflationary cosmology may be used to test the statistical predictions of quantum theory at very short distances and at very early times. Hidden-variables theories, such as the pilot-wave theory of de Broglie and Bohm, allow the existence of vacuum states with nonstandard field fluctuations (``quantum nonequilibrium''). We show that inflationary expansion can transfer microscopic nonequilibrium to macroscopic scales, resulting in anomalous power spectra for the cosmic microwave background. The conclusions depend only weakly on the details of the de Broglie-Bohm dynamics. We discuss, in particular, the nonequilibrium breaking of scale invariance for the primordial (scalar) power spectrum. We also show how nonequilibrium can generate primordial perturbations with nonrandom phases and intermode correlations (primordial non-Gaussianity). We address the possibility of a low-power anomaly at large angular scales, and show how it might arise from a nonequilibrium suppression of quantum noise. Recent observations are used to set an approximate bound on violations of quantum theory in the early Universe.
In this thesis, we study the decoherence of cosmological scalar perturbations during inflation. We first discuss the FRW model and cosmic inflation. Inflation is a period of accelerated expansion in the early universe, in typical models caused by a scalar field called inflaton. We review cosmological perturbation theory, where perturbations of the inflaton field and scalar degrees of freedom of the metric tensor are combined into the gauge-invariant Sasaki-Mukhanov variable. We quantize this variable using canonical quantization. Then, we discuss how interactions between the perturbations and their environment can lead to decoherence. In decoherence, the reduced density operator of the perturbations becomes diagonal with respect to a particular pointer basis. We argue that the pointer basis for the cosmological scalar perturbations consists of approximate eigenstates of the field value operator. Finally, we discuss how decoherence can help understand the transition from quantum theory to classical perturbation theory, and justify the standard treatment of perturbations and their initial conditions in cosmology. We conclude that since decoherence should not spoil the observationally successful predictions of this standard treatment, it is unlikely that the actual amount of decoherence could be observed in, say, the CMB radiation.