De
Sitter Days Abstract
Richard Woodard
(University of Florida)
Title: Post-Inflationary
Dynamics
Abstract:
I present recent work with Nick Tsamis, some of
which is described in astro-ph/0303175. We now have a stochastic
formulation of quantum gravity which explicitly confirms previous
perturbative calculations showing that the back-reaction from graviton
production slows inflation by an amount that eventually becomes
non-perturbatively strong. The new, stochastic formulation
permits one to follow this process into the non-perturbative regime
where inflation is not only halted but the universe actually enters a
brief phase of deflation. This deflationary period ends with the
creation of a hot, dense thermal barrier that scatters the infrared
gravitons needed to propagate the quantum correlations forward from the
epoch of inflationary particle production. Subsequent evolution is
controlled by the balance between the persistence of the thermal
barrier and the growth in the 4-volume of inflationary spacetime which
is causally related to a post-inflationary observer.
refs: hep-ph/0303175