1996/01/31 by Arjun Berera · 6 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #astro-ph #gr-qc #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.54.2519
published as Phys.Rev. D54 (1996) 2519-2534 · 28 pages, 0 figures, In Press Physical Review D 1996
arxiv created 1996/05/21 · openalex publication_date 1996/08/15 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
An energetic justification of a thermal component during inflation is given. The thermal component can act as a heat reservoir which induces thermal fluctuations on the inflaton field system. We showed previously that such thermal fluctuations could dominate quantum fluctuations in producing the initial seeds of density perturbations. A Langevin-like rate equation is derived from quantum field theory which describes the production of fluctuations in the inflaton field when acted upon by a simple modeled heat reservoir. In a certain limit this equation is shown to reduce to the standard Langevin equation, which we used to construct "Warm Inflation" scenarios in previous work. A particle physics interpretation of our system-reservoir model is offered.