Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-3-2016
Publication Title
Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation, and Cosmology
Abstract
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.
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevD.94.043502
Dartmouth Digital Commons Citation
Alexander, Stephon; Jyoti, Dhrubo; and Magueijo, João, "Inflation and the Quantum Measurement Problem" (2016). Dartmouth Scholarship. 2864.
https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/facoa/2864