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Why do cosmological perturbations look classical to us?
Article de revue scientifique   Avec comité de lecture

Why do cosmological perturbations look classical to us?

Claus Kiefer et David Polarski
Advanced Science Letters, Vol.2(2), p.164-173
04/06/2009

Résumé

According to the inflationary scenario of cosmology, all structure in the Universe can be traced back to primordial fluctuations during an accelerated (inflationary) phase of the very early Universe. A conceptual problem arises due to the fact that the primordial fluctuations are quantum, while the standard scenario of structure formation deals with classical fluctuations. In this essay we present a concise summary of the physics describing the quantum-to-classical transition. We first discuss the observational indistinguishability between classical and quantum correlation functions in the closed system approach (pragmatic view). We then present the open system approach with environment-induced decoherence. We finally discuss the question of the fluctuations' entropy for which, in principle, the concrete mechanism leading to decoherence possesses observational relevance.

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