Work

Second order perturbations during inflation beyond slow-roll

Year: 2011

Type: article

Abstract: We numerically calculate the evolution of second order cosmological perturbations for an inflationary scalar field without resorting to the slow-roll approximation or assuming large scales. In contrast to previous approaches we therefore use the full non-slow-roll source term for the second order Klein-Gordon equation which is valid on all scales. The numerical results are consistent with the ones obtained previously where slow-roll is a good approximation. We investigate the effect of localised features in the scalar field potential which break slow-roll for some portion of the evolution. The numerical package solving the second order Klein-Gordon equation has been released under an open source license and is available for download.

Source: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

DOI: 10.1088/1475-7516/2011/10/029

Authors: Ian Huston, Karim A Malik

Institution: Queen Mary University of London

Language: English

Topic: Cosmology and Gravitation Theories

Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: bronze

Funder: Science and Technology Facilities Council

Awards: Cosmological perturbation theory: meeting the challenges set by current and future observations, Inflationary Cosmology: Preparing the Theory to Match the Observations, G5399249723