Abstract

Previous numerical investigations of gravitational particle production during the coherent oscillation period of inflation displayed unexplained fluctuations in the spectral density of the produced particles. We argue that these features are due to the quantum interference of the coherent scattering reactions that produce the particles. We provide accurate analytic formulae to compute the particle production amplitude for a conformally- coupled scalar field, including the interference effect in the kinematic region where the production can be interpreted as inflaton scattering into scalar final states via graviton exchange.

Details

Title
Quantum interference in gravitational particle production
Author
Basso, Edward 1 ; Chung, Daniel J. H. 1 ; Kolb, Edward W. 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Long, Andrew J. 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

1  The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Physics, Madison, USA (GRID:grid.14003.36) (ISNI:0000 0001 2167 3675) 
2  University of Chicago, Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics and Enrico Fermi Institute, Chicago, USA (GRID:grid.170205.1) (ISNI:0000 0004 1936 7822) 
3  Rice University, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Houston, USA (GRID:grid.21940.3e) (ISNI:0000 0004 1936 8278) 
Pages
108
Publication year
2022
Publication date
Dec 2022
Publisher
Springer Nature B.V.
e-ISSN
10298479
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP12(2022)108
ProQuest document ID
2755975968
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2022. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.