Cosmological Consequences of Initial State Entanglement

TL;DR

This paper investigates how initial entanglement between inflaton fluctuations and another scalar field can alter cosmological observables during inflation, potentially leading to detectable effects without disrupting inflation.

Contribution

It demonstrates that initial state entanglement modifies inflaton mode equations and can produce observable effects in the power spectrum within a simple toy model.

Findings

Entanglement affects inflaton fluctuation modes.

Modified states can produce observable power spectrum changes.

Effects are consistent with inflationary back reaction constraints.

Abstract

We explore the cosmological consequences of having the fluctuations of the inflaton field entangled with those of another scalar, within the context of a toy model consisting of non-interacting, minimally coupled scalars in a fixed de Sitter background. We find that despite the lack of interactions in the Lagrangian, the initial state entanglement modifies the mode equation for the inflaton fluctuations and thus can induce changes in cosmological observables. These effects are examined for a variety of choices of masses and we find that they can be consistent with the requirement that the back reaction of the modified state not affect the inflationary phase while still giving rise to observable effects in the power spectrum. Our results suggest that more realistic extensions of the ideas explored here beyond the simple toy model may lead to interesting observable effects.