On signatures of spontaneous collapse dynamics modified single field inflation

TL;DR

This paper investigates how spontaneous collapse mechanisms in quantum mechanics could leave observable signatures in inflationary cosmology, specifically affecting tensor perturbations but not scalar ones, thus offering potential tests for quantum-to-classical transition theories.

Contribution

It demonstrates that spontaneous collapse dynamics can produce unique tensor sector signatures in inflation, providing a way to observationally distinguish these mechanisms from standard models.

Findings

Scalar observables are unaffected by collapse mechanisms.

Tensor spectrum can be blue-tilted due to collapse effects.

Modified consistency relation appears in tensor sector only.

Abstract

The observed classicality of primordial perturbations, despite their quantum origin during inflation, calls for a mechanism for quantum-to-classical transition of these initial fluctuations. As literature suggests a number of plausible mechanisms which try to address this issue, it is of importance to seek for concrete observational signatures of these several approaches in order to have a better understanding of the early universe dynamics. Among these several approaches, it is the spontaneous collapse dynamics of Quantum Mechanics which is most viable of leaving discrete observational signatures as collapse mechanism inherently changes the generic Quantum dynamics. We observe in this study that the observables from the scalar sector, i.e. scalar tilt $n_s$, running of scalar tilt $\alpha_s$ and running of running of scalar tilt $\beta_s$, can not potentially distinguish a collapse modified inflationary dynamics in the realm of canonical scalar field and $k-$inflationary scenarios. The only distinguishable imprint of collapse mechanism lies in the observables of tensor sector in the form of modified consistency relation and a blue-tilted tensor spectrum only when the collapse parameter $\delta$ is non-zero and positive.