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Phys. Rev. D 16, 251–260 (1977)

Path-integral quantization and cosmological particle production: An example

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D. M. Chitre*
Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106

J. B. Hartle
Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106
Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England

Received 29 October 1976; published in the issue dated 15 July 1977

The Feynman path-integral method is applied to the quantization of a scalar field moving in a cosmological background spacetime. The method is illustrated by computing particle production from the vacuum in a spatially flat, Robertson-Walker spacetime with scale factor R(t)=t. The result is a distribution of produced particle pairs which at large energies becomes a thermal distribution with a temperature T=ℏc/πkBR(t). The relation to other methods of quantization is discussed.

© 1977 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.16.251
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevD.16.251
PACS:

*Present address: Department of Physics, University of Montana, Bozeman, Montana 59715.

 
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