Breakdown of the semiclassical approximation during the early stages of preheating

Paul R. Anderson, Carmen Molina-París, and Dillon H. Sanders

Phys. Rev. D 92, 083522 – Published 21 October 2015

Abstract

The validity of the semiclassical approximation is investigated during the preheating phase in models of chaotic inflation using a modification of a criterion previously proposed for semiclassical gravity. If the modified criterion is violated then fluctuations of the two-point function for the quantum fields are large and the semiclassical approximation is not valid. Evidence is provided that the semiclassical approximation breaks down during the early stages of preheating, well before either scattering effects or backreaction effects are important.

Received 6 February 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.92.083522

Authors & Affiliations

Paul R. Anderson^1,*, Carmen Molina-París^2,†, and Dillon H. Sanders^1,3,‡

¹Department of Physics, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27109, USA
²Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom
³Department of Nuclear Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina 27695, USA

^*anderson@wfu.edu
^†carmen@maths.leeds.ac.uk
^‡dhsander@ncsu.edu

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Vol. 92, Iss. 8 — 15 October 2015

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Physical Review D

covering particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology