Joint Seminars on Cosmology and Gravitation

Speaker: Alexei A. Starobinsky (Landau Institute / RESCEU)
Title: To the local beginning of inflation and beyond
Date (JST): Tue, Nov 24, 2009, 14:00 - 15:00
Place: Room 630
Related File: 194.pdf
Abstract: Though such observable quantities as the spectrum and statistics of primordial scalar and tensor perturbations are independent on initial conditions at the local beginning of sufficiently long inflation, there exist many other quantities and effects which do depend on them. Observing these effects or their consequences will give some knowledge on the initial conditions. Examples are probabilities (branching ratios) of decay into different vacua and rms fluctuations of light scalar fields after inflation. Analytic expressions for these quantities derived using the original (probability conserving) stochastic approach are presented and their dependence on the initial conditions is discussed. Generically there seems to be no rule fixing these conditions uniquely. In particular, 'eternal' inflation is not eternal enough for this purpose, as well as for reaching equilibrium values for all observables.
Contact: Mukohyama