Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: In this article, I briefly review the status of infrared effects which occur when using inflationary models to calculate initial conditions for a subsequent hot, dense plasma phase. Three types of divergence have been identified in the literature: secular, "time-dependent" logarithms, which grow with time spent outside the horizon; "box-cutoff" logarithms, which encode a dependence on the infrared cutoff when calculating in a finite-sized box; and "quantum" logarithms, which depend on the ratio of a scale characterizing new physics to the scale of whatever process is under consideration, and whose interpretation is the same as conventional field theory. I review the calculations in which these divergences appear, and discuss the methods which have been developed to deal with them.
Source: Classical and Quantum Gravity
Author: David Seery
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2095435227