Entangled states as a probe of early universe history: a Higgs case study

TL;DR

This paper investigates how entanglement during inflation involving a Higgs-like scalar field can leave detectable imprints on cosmological observables, potentially revealing details of early universe phase transitions and energy scales.

Contribution

It introduces a framework to analyze entangled states with a Higgs-like spectator field and explores their signatures on the primordial power spectrum.

Findings

Higgs-like entangled states can produce distinctive features in the power spectrum.

Such features may be distinguishable from other scalar field effects in CMB residuals.

The study demonstrates the potential to probe early universe physics through entanglement signatures.

Abstract

I explore whether distinguishing features of phase transitions and/or the inflationary energy scale can be imprinted on cosmological observables due to entanglement during inflation, given a spectator scalar field with a Higgs-like potential. As a consequence of this analysis, I also present results that illustrate the variety of features a Higgs-like spectator can imprint on the primordial power spectrum due to entanglement, as well as how easy it might be to distinguish such spectra from other similar scalar field results at the level of CMB residuals. I utilize the technical framework for dynamically generated entangled states developed in ( arXiv:2211.11079 [hep-th] , arXiv:2104.13410 [hep-th] ) to obtain my results.