Conformal invariance and phenomenology of cosmological particle production

TL;DR

This paper explores the phenomenology of cosmological particle production through conformal invariance, proposing a model where particle creation rate is proportional to the Weyl tensor squared, and linking scalar fields to metric conformal factors.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach connecting particle creation to conformal invariance and the metric's conformal factor, leading to natural quartic scalar self-interaction terms.

Findings

Particle creation rate proportional to Weyl tensor squared.

Scalar field identified with metric's conformal factor.

Quartic self-interaction term arises naturally in four dimensions.

Abstract

Starting with the idea to describe phenomenologically the particle creation in the strong gravitational fields, we introduced explicitly the particle number nonconservation (= creation law) into the action integral with the corresponding Lagrange multiplier. Following the fundamental result by Ya. B. Zel'dovich and A. A. Starobinsky (1977) we then postulated that the rate of particle creation is proportional to the square of Weyl tensor. Concerning the conformal invariance, yet another question arises: how the scalar field could know about the surgery made on the metric tensor (if such an invariance is the fundamental law of Nature and not just the mathematical exercise)? The only way is that the scalar field is itself the part of metric, namely, the conformal factor. We showed, that such an identification results in the natural appearance of the quartic self-interaction term in the scalar field Lagrangian, which is needed to make particle massive. And it is just quartic, because our space-time is four-dimensional.