Quantum Out-of-Equilibrium Cosmology

TL;DR

This paper explores the quantum dynamics of particle production during early universe inflation and reheating, using advanced stochastic and quantum chaos tools to improve understanding of non-equilibrium cosmological phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces a quantum corrected Fokker-Planck equation, analyzes quantum chaos measures, and links stochastic inflation with quantum chaos indicators in a novel, comprehensive framework.

Findings

Quantum corrected Fokker-Planck equation better describes particle creation.

Quantification of quantum chaos using Spectral Form Factor and OTOC.

Derived bounds on quantum chaos in early universe models.

Abstract

In this work, our prime focus is to study the one to one correspondence between the conduction phenomena in electrical wires with impurity and the scattering events responsible for particle production during stochastic inflation and reheating implemented under a closed quantum mechanical system in early universe cosmology. In this connection, we also present a derivation of fourth order corrected version of the Fokker Planck equation and its analytical solution for studying the dynamical features of the particle creation events in the stochastic inflation and reheating stage of the universe. It is explicitly shown from our computation that quantum corrected Fokker Planck equation describe the particle creation phenomena better for Dirac delta type of scatterer. In this connection, we additionally discuss It$\hat{o}$, Stratonovich prescription and the explicit role of finite temperature effective potential for solving the probability distribution profile. Furthermore, we extend our discussion to describe the quantum description of randomness involved in the dynamics. We also present a computation to derive the expression for the measure of the stochastic non-linearity arising in the stochastic inflation and reheating epoch of the universe, often described by Lyapunov Exponent. Apart from that, we quantify the quantum chaos arising in a closed system by a more strong measure, commonly known as Spectral Form Factor using the principles of Random Matrix Theory (RMT). Additionally, we discuss the role of out of time order correlation (OTOC) function to describe quantum chaos in the present non-equilibrium field theoretic setup. Finally, for completeness, we also provide a bound on the measure of quantum chaos arising due to the presence of stochastic non-linear dynamical interactions into the closed quantum system of the early universe in a completely model-independent way.