2010/02/15 by Mariano Franco, Franco, Mariano, Esteban Calzetta +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1002.2916
openalex publication_date 2010/02/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In this paper we analyze the possibility of detecting nontrivial quantum phenomena in observations of the temperature anisotropy of the cosmic background radiation (CBR), for example, if the Universe could be found in a coherent superposition of two states corresponding to different CBR temperature self-correlations. Such observations are sensitive to scalar primordial fluctuations but insensitive to tensor fluctuations, which are therefore converted into an environment for the former. Even for a free inflaton field minimally coupled to gravity, scalar-tensor interactions induce enough decoherence among histories of the scalar fluctuations as to render them classical under any realistic probe of their amplitudes.