Non-Markovian open quantum system approach to the early universe: I. Damping of gravitational waves by matter

Perturbative quantum damping of cosmological expansion

Perturbative quantum gravity in the framework of the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism is applied to compute lowest-order corrections to the actual expansion of the Universe described in terms of the spatially flat Friedman-Lematre-Robertson-Walker solution. The classical metric is approximated by a third order polynomial perturbation around the Minkowski metric. It is shown that the quantum contribution to the classical expansion, although extremely small, has damping properties (quantum friction), i.e. it slows down the expansion.

On finite density effects on cosmic reheating and moduli decay and implications for Dark Matter production

We study the damping of an oscillating scalar field in a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker spacetime by perturbative processes, taking into account the finite density effects that interactions with the plasma of decay products have on the damping rate. The scalar field may be identified with the inflaton, in which case this process leads to the reheating of the universe after inflation. It can also resemble a modulus that dominates the energy density of the universe at later times. We find that the finite density corrections to the damping rate can have a drastic effect on the thermal history and con…

修正的圈量子宇宙学中量子阻尼的普遍性

Genericness of quantum damping of cosmological shear in modified loop quantum cosmology

研究修正的圈量子宇宙学中量子阻尼的普遍性，通过分析初始条件和数值模拟，发现宇宙在反弹后演化中存在各向同性吸引子，各向异性指数衰减，不依赖物质内容。

Nonlocal Gravity: Damping of Linearized Gravitational Waves

In nonlocal general relativity, linearized gravitational waves are damped as they propagate from the source to the receiver in the Minkowski vacuum. Nonlocal gravity is a generalization of Einstein's theory of gravitation in which nonlocality is due to the gravitational memory of past events. That nonlocal gravity is dissipative is demonstrated in this paper within certain approximation schemes. The gravitational memory drag leads to the decay of the amplitude of gravitational waves given by the exponential damping factor exp (-t/τ), where $τ$ depends on the kernel of nonlocal gravity. The dam…

Mixing of blackbodies: Increasing our view of inflation to 17 e-folds with spectral distortions from Silk damping

Silk damping in the early Universe, before and during recombination, erases anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) on small scales. This power, which disappears from anisotropies, appears in the monopole as y-type, i-type and μ-type distortions. The observation of the CMB spectral distortions will thus make available to us the information about the primordial power spectrum on scales corresponding to the comoving wavenumbers $8< k < 10^4 Mpc^{-1}$ increasing our total view of inflation, when combined with CMB anisotropies, to span 17 e-folds. These distortions can be understood …

Reynolds numbers in the early Universe

After electron-positron annihilation and prior to photon decoupling the magnetic Reynolds number is approximately twenty orders of magnitude larger than its kinetic counterpart which is, in turn, smaller than one. In this globally neutral system the large-scale inhomogeneities are provided by the spatial fluctuations of the scalar curvature. Owing to the analogy with the description of Markovian conducting fluids in the presence of acoustic fluctuations, the evolution equations of a putative magnetic field are averaged over the large-scale flow determined by curvature perturbations. General le…

Oscillating scalar dissipating in a medium

We study how oscillations of a scalar field condensate are damped due to dissipative effects in a thermal medium. Our starting point is a non-linear and non-local condensate equation of motion descending from a 2PI-resummed effective action derived in the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism appropriate for non-equilibrium quantum field theory. We solve this non-local equation by means of multiple-scale perturbation theory appropriate for time-dependent systems, obtaining approximate analytic solutions valid for very long times. The non-linear effects lead to power-law damping of oscillations, that at …

Constraint on the growth factor of the cosmic structure from the damping of the baryon acoustic oscillation signature

We determine a constraint on the growth factor by measuring the damping of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the matter power spectrum using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey luminous red galaxy sample. The damping of the BAO is detected at the one sigma level. We obtain σ_8D_1(z=0.3) = 0.42^{+0.34}_{-0.28} at the 1σstatistical level, where σ_8 is the root mean square overdensity in a sphere of radius 8h^{-1}Mpc and D_1(z) is the growth factor at redshift z. The above result assumes that other parameters are fixed and the cosmology is taken to be a spatially flat cold dark matter universe with th…

C$ν$B damping of primordial gravitational waves and the fine-tuning of the C$γ$B temperature anisotropy

Damping of primordial gravitational waves due to the anisotropic stress contribution owing to the cosmological neutrino background (C$ν$B) is investigated in the context of a radiation-to-matter dominated Universe. Besides its inherent effects on the gravitational wave propagation, the inclusion of the C$ν$B anisotropic stress into the dynamical equations also affects the tensor mode contribution to the anisotropy of the cosmological microwave background (C$γ$B) temperature. Given that the fluctuations of the C$ν$B temperature in the (ultra)relativistic regime are driven by a multipole expansi…

Quantitative Constraints on the Reionization History from the IGM Damping Wing Signature in Two Quasars at z > 7

During reionization, neutral hydrogen in the intergalactic medium (IGM) imprints a damping wing absorption feature on the spectrum of high-redshift quasars. A detection of this signature provides compelling evidence for a significantly neutral Universe, and enables measurements of the hydrogen neutral fraction $x_{\rm HI}(z)$ at that epoch. Obtaining reliable quantitative constraints from this technique, however, is challenging due to stochasticity induced by the patchy inside-out topology of reionization, degeneracies with quasar lifetime, and the unknown unabsorbed quasar spectrum close to r…

Simulating cosmological supercooling with a cold atom system II

We perform an analysis of the supercooled state in an analogue of an early universe phase transition based on a one dimensional, two-component Bose gas with time-dependent interactions. We demonstrate that the system behaves in the same way as a thermal, relativistic Bose gas undergoing a first order phase transition. We propose a way to prepare the state of the system in the metastable phase as an analogue to supercooling in the early universe. While we show that parametric resonances in the system can be suppressed by thermal damping, we find that the theoretically estimated thermal damping …