Friday, May 4, 2012

1205.0656 (Jonathan White et al.)

Curvature perturbation in multi-field inflation with non-minimal coupling    [PDF]

Jonathan White, Masato Minamitsuji, Misao Sasaki
In this paper we discuss a multi-field model of inflation in which generally all fields are non-minimally coupled to the Ricci scalar and have non-canonical kinetic terms. The background evolution and first-order perturbations for the model are evaluated in both the Jordan and Einstein frames, and the respective curvature perturbations compared. We confirm that they are indeed not the same - unlike in the single-field case - and also that the difference is a direct consequence of the isocurvature perturbations inherent to multi-field models. This result leads us to conclude that the notion of adiabaticity is not invariant under conformal transformations. Using a two-field example we show that even if in one frame the evolution is adiabatic, meaning that the curvature perturbation is conserved on super-horizon scales, in general in the other frame isocurvature perturbations continue to source the curvature perturbation. We also find that it is possible to realise a particular model in which curvature perturbations in both frames are conserved but with each being of different magnitude. These examples highlight that the curvature perturbation itself, despite being gauge-invariant, does not correspond directly to an observable. The non-equivalence of the two curvature perturbations would also be important when considering the addition of Standard Model matter into the system.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.0656

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