2003/03/11 by C. Armendariz-Picon, C Armend riz-Pic n, Eugene A. Lim · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #astro-ph #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2003/12/006
published as JCAP 0312:006,2003 · 10 two-column pages, 1 figure; uses RevTeX4
arxiv created 2003/03/11 · openalex publication_date 2003/12/15 · arxiv updated 2011/05/12 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
In the presence of a short-distance cutoff, the choice of a vacuum state in an inflating, non-de Sitter universe is unavoidably ambiguous. The ambiguity is related to the time at which initial conditions for the mode functions are specified and to the way in which the expansion of the universe affects those initial conditions. In this paper we study the imprint of these uncertainties on the predictions of inflation. We parametrize the most general set of possible vacuum initial conditions by two phenomenological variables. We find that the power spectrum generated receives an oscillatory correction, the amplitude of which is proportional to the Hubble parameter over the cutoff scale. In order to further constrain the phenomenological parameters that characterize the vacuum definition, we study gravitational particle production during different cosmological epochs.