Non-equilibrium evolution of quantum fields during inflation and late accelerating expansion

Abstract: To understand mechanisms leading to inflation and late acceleration of the Universe it is important to see how one or a set of quantum fields may evolve such that the classical energy-momentum tensor behave similar to a cosmological constant. In this work we consider a toy model including 3 scalar fields with very different masses to study the formation of a light axion-like condensate, presumed to be responsible for inflation and/or late accelerating expansion of the Universe. Despite its simplicity, this model reflects hierarchy of masses and couplings of the Standard Model and its candidate extensions. The investigation is performed in the framework of non-equilibrium quantum field theory in a consistently evolved FLRW geometry. We discuss in details how the initial conditions for such a model must be defined in a fully quantum setup and show that in a multi-component model interactions reduce the number of independent initial degrees of freedom. Numerical simulation of this model shows that it can be fully consistent with present cosmological observations. For the chosen range of parameters we find that quantum interactions rather than effective potential of a condensate is the dominant contributor in the energy density of the Universe and triggers both inflation and late accelerating expansion. Nonetheless, despite its small contribution in the energy density, the light scalar field - in both condensate and quasi free particle forms - has a crucial role in controlling the trend of heavier fields. Furthermore, up to precision of our simulations we do not find any IR singularity during inflation. These findings highlight uncertainties in attempts to extract information about physics of the early Universe by naively comparing predictions of local effective classical models with cosmological observations, neglecting inherently non-local nature of quantum processes.