Inflaton Decay in an Alpha Vacuum

Abstract

We study the alpha vacua of de Sitter space by considering the decay rate of the inflaton field coupled to a scalar field placed in an alpha vacuum. We find an {\em alpha dependent} Bose enhancement relative to the Bunch-Davies vacuum and, surprisingly, no non-renormalizable divergences. We also consider a modified alpha dependent time ordering prescription for the Feynman propagator and show that it leads to an alpha independent result. This result suggests that it may be possible to calculate in any alpha vacuum if we employ the appropriate causality preserving prescription.