It was recently proposed that modifications to physics at trans-Planckian energies could lead to a non-adiabatic evolution of the scalar fluctuations responsible for the temperature anisotropy of the cosmological microwave background. If such a possibility was to be confirmed, it would provide us the first possibility to ever get experimental measurements of the physics near the Planck scale. This work investigates the physicality of such non-adiabatic evolutions, by avoiding the introduction of any exotic physics, by working well below the Planck scale. Simple 'hybrid-like' models of inflation composed of an inflaton field coupled to another heavy scalar will be used. It will be shown that small oscillations in the heavy scalar field can generate a non-adiabatic evolution of the inflationary vacuum leading to new features in the power spectrum that could eventually be observed. The naturalness of this non-adiabaticity is also studied, leading to a constraint about the maximum duration of inflation if these effects are to be big enough to ever be detectable.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.80316 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Creators | Lemieux, François, 1979- |
| Contributors | Burgess, C. P. (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Physics.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002095642, proquestno: AAIMQ98685, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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