Quick search Find article
Quick search
Find article

The emergence of classical behaviour in the quantum fluctuations of a scalar field in an expanding universe

A L Matacz

Show affiliations


The author investigates the evolution of a massless, conformally coupled scalar field interacting with an environment in a spatially flat FRW metric. The environment is taken to be a second massless, conformally coupled scalar field. By finding the ground state wavefunctional of the coupled system and integrating out the unobservable scalar field the author obtains a reduced density matrix for the system, and then uses the reduced density matrix to show that classical behaviour emerges for wavelengths greater than the Hubble radius. This occurs despite the absence of particle creation.


PACS

98.80.-k Cosmology

MSC

83F05 Cosmology

Subjects

Gravitation and cosmology

Astrophysics and astroparticles

Dates

Issue 3 (March 1993)



View by subject




Export








Please login to access our web services, or create an account if you don't yet have one.

You must have cookies enabled in your web browser to be able to login.

Username
Password

Forgotten your password? Get a new one here.