Mass of cosmological perturbations in the hybrid and dressed metric formalisms of Loop Quantum Cosmology for the Starobinsky and exponential potentials

TL;DR

This paper compares the mass of cosmological perturbations in hybrid and dressed metric formalisms of Loop Quantum Cosmology for Starobinsky and exponential potentials, highlighting differences at the bounce relevant for quantum geometry effects.

Contribution

It extends previous analysis of the perturbation mass to include Starobinsky and exponential potentials, revealing formalism-dependent behaviors at the bounce.

Findings

Hybrid mass is positive at the bounce for certain potentials.

Dressed metric mass is negative at the bounce for the same potentials.

Differences are significant near the bounce, affecting quantum geometry effects.

Abstract

The hybrid and the dressed metric formalisms for the study of primordial perturbations in Loop Quantum Cosmology lead to dynamical equations for the modes of these perturbations that are of a generalized harmonic-oscillator type, with a mass that depends on the background but is the same for all modes. For quantum background states that are peaked on trajectories of the effective description of Loop Quantum Cosmology, the main difference between the two considered formalisms is found in the expression of this mass. The value of the mass at the bounce is especially important, since it is only in a short interval around this event that the quantum geometry effects on the perturbations are relevant. In a previous article, the properties of this mass were discussed for an inflaton potential of quadratic form, or with similar characteristics. In the present work, we extend this study to other interesting potentials in cosmology, namely the Starobinsky and the exponential potentials. We prove that there exists a finite interval of values of the potential (which includes the zero but typically goes beyond the sector of kinetically dominated inflaton energy density) for which the hybrid mass is positive at the bounce whereas the dressed metric mass is negative.