On the Decoherence of Primordial Fluctuations During Inflation

Abstract

We study the evironment-induced decoherence of cosmological perturbations in an inflationary background. Splitting our spectrum of perturbations into two distinct sets characterized by their wavelengths (super and sub-Hubble), we identify the long wavelength modes with our system and the remainder with an environment. We examine the effects of the interactions between our system and the environment. This interaction causes the long-wavelength modes to decohere for realistic values of the coupling and we conclude that interactions due to backreaction are more than sufficient to decohere the system within 60 e-foldings of inflation. This is shown explicitly by obtaining an analytic solution to a master equation detailing the evolution of the density matrix of the system.