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13 - Structure Formation in the Early Universe

from Part IV - Cosmological and Black Hole Backreaction with Fluctuations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2020

Bei-Lok B. Hu
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, College Park
Enric Verdaguer
Affiliation:
Universitat de Barcelona
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Summary

Structure formation in the early universe is a key problem in modern cosmology. In this chapter we discuss stochastic gravity as an alternative framework for studying the generation of primordial inhomogeneities in inflationary models, which can easily incorporate effects that go beyond the linear perturbations of the inflaton field. We show that the correlation functions that follow from the Einstein–Langevin equation, which emerge in the framework of stochastic gravity, coincide with that obtained with the usual quantization procedures when both the metric perturbations and the inflaton fluctuations are linear. Stochastic gravity, however, can also deal very naturally with the fluctuations of the inflaton field beyond the linear approximation. Here, we illustrate the stochastic approach with one of the simplest chaotic inflationary models in which the background spacetime is a quasi de Sitter universe, and prove the equivalence of the stochastic and quantum correlations to the linear order.

Type
Chapter
Information
Semiclassical and Stochastic Gravity
Quantum Field Effects on Curved Spacetime
, pp. 410 - 422
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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