Thermal enhancement of inflationary magnetic fields

TL;DR

This paper explores how assuming a thermal initial state during inflation can significantly enhance primordial magnetic fields, offering a promising minimal model for inflationary magnetogenesis without complex modifications.

Contribution

It introduces a thermal initial condition framework that boosts magnetic field generation during inflation, reducing the need for non-minimal couplings or nonlinear electrodynamics.

Findings

Magnetic energy density scaling changes from a^{-4} to a^{-3} due to thermal effects.

Potential present-day magnetic field strength enhancement ranges from 10^8 to 10^16.

Thermal initial conditions can mitigate conformal invariance issues in magnetogenesis.

Abstract

We investigate primordial magnetogenesis by assuming the gauge field is prepared in a thermal state during inflation rather than the standard Bunch-Davies vacuum. The temperature $\mathcal{T}$ introduces a physical scale that breaks conformal invariance at the level of the state while preserving the standard Maxwell action. This modification results in a {\it dissipative boost} that alters the magnetic energy density scaling from $a^{-4}$ to $a^{-3}$, resulting in a present-day magnetic field $B_0$ enhancement that can potentially range from about $10^{8}$ to $10^{16}$ on galactic scales. While this toy model alone does not satisfy observational lower bounds, it demonstrates that thermal initial conditions can significantly mitigate the conformal obstruction. Our results suggest that embedding this mechanism within a fully dynamical warm inflation framework, where dissipation continuously maintains the thermal bath, provides a highly promising path towards successfully realizing a minimal model of inflationary magnetogenesis without the need to invoke non-minimal couplings, anomalous background dynamics or nonlinear extensions of electrodynamics.