Vacuum state for LQC perturbations

 Tuesday, March 23rd

Rita Neves, Universidad Complutense

Vacuum state for LQC perturbations
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by Jorge Pullin

One of the main achievements of the model of cosmology known as Inflation, in which the universe after the Big Bang expands exponentially, is that it predicts the spectrum of cosmic microwave background radiation. This is radiation that comes to us directly from the earliest moments when the universe stopped being a primordial soup and became transparent to light. If one looks in different directions, the frequency of the radiation is not exactly the same. It differs in parts in a million. And the differences are not random. If one looks in a given direction and then looks at a circle in the sky centered in that direction and averages out the frequencies, if things were random, the result would be the same no matter what size the circle. It turns out it does, mathematically one says the signals are correlated. 

If one assumes one starts inflation with a quantum field present, and one assumes the simplest possible state for the quantum field (the vacuum) and evolves the quantum state through inflation, the state develops correlations that correspond precisely to the ones observed in the cosmic microwave radiation. This model is remarkable in its simplicity and efficacy. 

In traditional cosmology, where things start with a Big Bang where the whole universe is concentrated at a point, it appears natural to place the quantum state of the field in the vacuum at the beginning of inflation, as it is impossible to place it at the Big Bang as the theory breaks down there (densities and curvatures are infinite). But in loop quantum cosmology, the Big Bang is replaced by a Big Bounce where everything is finite and there is dynamics of the universe prior to it. Why would then place the state in a vacuum at the beginning of Inflation, as that instant in time does not have any privileged meaning. Perhaps one should place it at the Bounce (now this is possible as the space-time is regular there). Or somewhere else. All that means that at the beginning of Inflation, the quantum field will not be in the vacuum state anymore. This talk addressed these issues.