Null Energy Condition Violations in Eternal Inflation
The usual scenario of ``eternal inflation'' involves an approximately de Sitter spacetime undergoing upward fluctuations of the local expansion rate $H$. This spacetime requires frequent violations of the Null Energy Condition (NEC). We investigate the fluctuations of the energy-momentum t...
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | unknown |
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arXiv
2001
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| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.gr-qc/0111109 https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0111109 |
| Summary: | The usual scenario of ``eternal inflation'' involves an approximately de Sitter spacetime undergoing upward fluctuations of the local expansion rate $H$. This spacetime requires frequent violations of the Null Energy Condition (NEC). We investigate the fluctuations of the energy-momentum tensor of the scalar field in de Sitter space as a possible source of such violations. We find that fluctuations of the energy-momentum tensor smeared in space and time are well-defined and may provide the NEC violations. Our results for slow-roll inflation are consistent with the standard calculations of inflationary density fluctuations. In the diffusive regime where quantum fluctuations dominate the slow-roll evolution, the magnitude of smeared energy-momentum tensor fluctuations is large enough to create frequent NEC violations. : Talk given at COSMO-2001, Rovaniemi, Finland. 7 pages, 2 figures |
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