Abstract
It is well-known that the primordial scalar curvature and tensor perturbations, ζ and γij, are conserved on super-horizon scales in minimal inflation models. However, their wave functional has a rapidly oscillating phase which is slow-roll unsuppressed, as can be seen either from boundary (total-derivative) terms of cosmological perturbations, or the WKB approximation of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. Such an oscillatory phase involves gravitational non-linearity between scalar and tensor perturbations. By tracing out unobserved modes, the oscillatory phase causes faster decoherence of primordial gravitons compared to those by bulk interactions. Our results put a stronger lower bound of decoherence effect to the recent proposals probing squeezed primordial gravitons.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Ali Akil, Haipeng An, Chao Chen, Joseph Conlon, Ling-Yan Hung, Juan Maldacena, Rok Medves, Michael Nee, Malcolm Perry, Guilherme L. Pimentel, Xi Tong, Aron Wall, Zhenbin Yang, Zhong-Zhi Xianyu and Yuhang Zhu for helpful discussions. SN wants to acknowledge funding support from the China Scholarship Council-FaZheng Group- University of Oxford. CMS and YW were supported in part by the National Key R&D Program of China (2021YFC2203100), the NSFC Excellent Young Scientist Scheme (Hong Kong and Macau) Grant No. 12022516, and by the RGC of Hong Kong SAR, China (Project No. 16306422 and 16303621).
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Ning, S., Sou, C.M. & Wang, Y. On the decoherence of primordial gravitons. J. High Energ. Phys. 2023, 101 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2023)101
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2023)101