No abstract

We study the quantum backreaction from inflationary fluctuations of a very light, non-minimally coupled spectator scalar and show that it is a viable candidate for dark energy. The problem is solved by suitably adapting the formalism of stochastic inflation. This allows us to selfconsistently account for the backreaction on the background expansion rate of the Universe where its effects are large. This framework is equivalent to that of semiclassical gravity in which matter vacuum fluctuations are included at the one loop level, but purely quantum gravitational fluctuations are neglected. Our results show that dark energy in our model can be characterized by a distinct effective equation of state parameter (as a function of redshift) which allows for testing of the model at the level of the background.

In this paper we study a massless, minimally coupled scalar field in a FLRW spacetime with periods of different constant deceleration parameter. We assume the Bunch-Davies vacuum during inflation and then use a sudden matching approximation to match it onto radiation era and subsequently onto matter era. We then proceed to calculate the one-loop energy-momentum tensor from the inflationary quantum vacuum fluctuations in different eras. The energy-momentum tensor has the form of an ideal (quantum) fluid, characterized by an equation of state. When compared with the background, far away from the matching the quantum energy density in radiation era exhibits a contribution that grows logarithmically with the scale factor. In matter era the ratio of the quantum to classical fluid settles eventually to a tiny constant, ρ q /ρ ≃ ( H 0 ) 2 /(4πm 2 P c 4 ) ∼ 10 −13 for a grand unified scale inflation. Curiously, the late time scaling of quantum fluctuations suggests that they contribute a little to the dark matter of the Universe, provided that it clusters as cold dark matter, which needs to be checked. *

We evaluate the one-graviton loop contribution to the vacuum polarization on de Sitter background in a 1-parameter family of exact, de Sitter invariant gauges. Our result is computed using dimensional regularization and fully renormalized with BPHZ counterterms, which must include a noninvariant owing to the time-ordered interactions. Because the graviton propagator engenders a physical breaking of de Sitter invariance two structure functions are needed to express the result. In addition to its relevance for the gauge issue this is the first time a covariant gauge graviton propagator has been used to compute a noncoincident loop. A number of identities are derived which should facilitate further graviton loop computations.

We calculate the one-loop corrections from inflationary gravitons to the electromagnetic fields of a point charge and a point magnetic dipole on a locally de Sitter space background. Results are obtained both for an observer at rest in co-moving coordinates, whose physical distance from the sources increases with the expanding universe, and for an observer at rest in static coordinates, whose physical distance from the sources is constant. The fields of both sources show the de Sitter analogs of the fractional G/r 2 corrections which occur in flat space, but there are also some fractional GH 2 corrections due to the scattering of virtual photons from the vast ensemble of infrared gravitons produced by inflation. The co-moving observer perceives the magnitude of the point charge to increase linearly with co-moving time and logarithmically with the co-moving position, however, the magnetic dipole shows only a negative logarithmic spatial variation. The static observer perceives no secular change of the point charge but he does report a secular enhancement of the magnetic dipole moment.