Quantum unitary dynamics in cosmological spacetimes. (English) Zbl 1360.83087

Cortez, Jerónimo; Mena Marugán, Guillermo A.; Velhinho, José M.

Ann. Phys. 363, 36-47 (2015).

Summary: We address the question of unitary implementation of the dynamics for scalar fields in cosmological scenarios. Together with invariance under spatial isometries, the requirement of a unitary evolution singles out a rescaling of the scalar field and a unitary equivalence class of Fock representations for the associated canonical commutation relations. Moreover, this criterion provides as well a privileged quantization for the unscaled field, even though the associated dynamics is not unitarily implementable in that case. We discuss the relation between the initial data that determine the Fock representations in the rescaled and unscaled descriptions, and clarify that the S-matrix is well defined in both cases. In our discussion, we also comment on a recently proposed generalized notion of unitary implementation of the dynamics, making clear the difference with the standard unitarity criterion and showing that the two approaches are not equivalent.

MSC:

83F05	Cosmology
83C47	Methods of quantum field theory in general relativity and gravitational theory
81T20	Quantum field theory on curved space or space-time backgrounds

Keywords:

quantum field theory; curved spacetime; unitary dynamics; uniqueness criteria

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