2008

Why do cosmological perturbations look classical to us?

Kiefer, Claus, Polarski, David

Understand

According to the inflationary scenario of cosmology, all structure in the Universe can be traced back to primordial fluctuations during an accelerated (inflationary) phase of the very early Universe.

A conceptual problem arises due to the fact that the primordial fluctuations are quantum, while the standard scenario of structure formation deals with classical fluctuations.
In this essay we present a concise summary of the physics describing the quantum-to-classical transition.
We first discuss the observational indistinguishability between classical and quantum correlation functions in the closed system approach (pragmatic view).

Built on

W. Israel, Phys. Lett. A 57, 107 (1976)
1976
Earlier work this paper cites.
A. A. Starobinsky, JETP Lett. 30, 682 (1979)
1979
Earlier work this paper cites.
A. H. Guth and S.-Y. Pi, Phys. Rev. D 32, 1899 (1985)
1985
Earlier work this paper cites.
D. H. Lyth, Phys. Rev. D 31, 1792 (1985)
1985
Earlier work this paper cites.
E. Joos and H. D. Zeh, Z. Phys. B 59, 223 (1985)
1985
Earlier work this paper cites.
L. P. Grishchuk and Y. V. Sidorov, Class. Quantum Grav. 6, L161 (1989)
1989
Earlier work this paper cites.
T. Prokopec, Class. Quantum Grav. 10, 2295 (1993)
1993
Earlier work this paper cites.
D. N. Page, Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 1291 (1993)
1993
Earlier work this paper cites.
A. Albrecht, P. Ferreira, M. Joyce, and T. Prokopec, Phys. Rev. D 50, 4807 (1994)
1994
Earlier work this paper cites.
D. Polarski and A. A. Starobinsky, Class. Quantum Grav. 13, 377 (1996)
1996
Earlier work this paper cites.
J. Lesgourgues, D. Polarski, and A. A. Starobinsky, Nucl. Physics B 497, 479 (1997)
1997
Earlier work this paper cites.
C. Kiefer and D. Polarski, Ann. Phys. (Leipzig) 7, 137 (1998)
1998
Earlier work this paper cites.

Similar

C. Kiefer, D. Polarski, and A. A. Starobinsky, Int. J. Mod. Phys. D 7, 455 (1998)
1998
Cited alongside, same era.
C. Kiefer, J. Lesgourgues, D. Polarski, and A. A. Starobinsky, Class. Quantum Grav. 15, L67 (1998)
1998
Cited alongside, same era.
A. R. Liddle and D. H. Lyth, Cosmological inflation and large-scale structure, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2000)
2000
Cited alongside, same era.
J. Lesgourgues, S. Prunet, and A. A. Starobinsky, Astron. Astrophys. 359, 414 (2000)
2000
Cited alongside, same era.
C. Kiefer, D. Polarski, and A. A. Starobinsky, Phys. Rev. D 62, 043518 (2000)
2000
Cited alongside, same era.
C. Kiefer, Class. Quantum Grav. 18, L151 (2001)
2001
Cited alongside, same era.
L. Diósi and C. Kiefer, J. Phys. A 35, 2675 (2002)
2002
Cited alongside, same era.
E. Joos, H. D. Zeh, C. Kiefer, D. Giulini, J. Kupsch, and I.-O. Stamatescu, Decoherence and the appearance of a classical world in quantum theory, second edition, Springer, Berlin (2003)
2003
Cited alongside, same era.
W. H. Zurek, Rev. Mod. Phys. 75, 715 (2003)
2003
Cited alongside, same era.
P. Hayden, D. W. Leung, and A. Winter, arXiv:quant-ph/0407049v2 (2005)
2005
Cited alongside, same era.
F. C. Lombardo and D. López Nacir, Phys. Rev. D 72, 063506 (2005)
2005
Cited alongside, same era.
A. Perez, H. Sahlmann, and D. Sudarsky, Class. Quantum Grav. 23, 2317 (2006)
2006
Cited alongside, same era.

Then

C. Kiefer, I. Lohmar, D. Polarski, and A. A. Starobinsky, Class. Quantum Grav. 24, 1699 (2007)
2007
Later among the works it cites.
H. D. Zeh, The Physical Basis of the Direction of Time, fifth edition, Springer, Berlin (2007)
2007
Later among the works it cites.
J. W. Sharman and G. D. Moore, JCAP 0711:020 (2007)
2007
Later among the works it cites.
P. Martineau, Class. Quantum Grav. 24, 5817 (2007)
2007
Later among the works it cites.
T. Prokopec and G. I. Rigopoulos, JCAP 0711:029 (2007)
Original
2007
Later among the works it cites.
E. Komatsu, J. Dunkley, M. R. Nolta, C. L. Bennett, B. Gold, G. Hinshaw, N. Jarosik, D. Larson, M. Limon, L. Page, D. N. Spergel, M. Halpern, R. S. Hill, A. Kogut, S. S. Meyer, G. S. Tucker, J. L. Weiland, E. Wollack, and E. L. Wright, arXiv:0803.0547v1 (2008)
Original
2008
Closest in time.
W. H. Kinney, E. W. Kolb, A. Melchiorri, and A. Riotto, arXiv:0805.2966v2 (2008)
Original
2008
Closest in time.
D. H. Lyth and D. Seery, Phys. Lett. B 662, 309 (2008)
2008
Closest in time.
M. Schlosshauer, Decoherence and the Quantum-to-Classical Transition, Springer, Berlin (2008)
2008
Closest in time.
M. Schlosshauer, arXiv:quant-ph/0605249v3 (2008)
2008
Closest in time.
Y. Nambu, Phys. Rev. D 78, 044023 (2008)
2008
Closest in time.
C. P. Burgess, R. Holman, and D. Hoover, Phys. Rev. D 77, 063534 (2008)
2008
Closest in time.

Beyond the bibliography

alphaXiv searches the wider corpus for related work and actual follow-ups.

Open on alphaXiv

alphaXiv is searching for related work…

Reading the bibliography…