Decoherence during Inflation

FERNANDO C. LOMBARDO

Peyresq, Francia

Workshop; XI Peyresq Workshop on Cosmology, Peyresq; 2006

   We show how the quantum-to-classical transition of the cosmological fluctuations produced duringinflation can be described by means of the influence functional and the master equation. We split theinflaton field into the system field (long-wavelength modes), and the environment, represented by its ownshort-wavelength modes. We compute the decoherence times for the system-field modes and comparethem with the other time scales of the model. We present the renormalized stochastic Langevin equationfor an homogeneous system field and then we analyze the influence of the environment on the powerspectrum for some modes in the system.