Production of Massless Fermions during Inflation
Authors: T. Prokopec (Heidelberg University) R. P. Woodard (University of Florida)
Comments: 15 pages, LaTeX 2e, 1 figure
Report-no: CERN-TH/2003-173,HD-THEP-03-39, UFIFT-HEP-03-21
We compute the one loop self energy, in a locally de Sitter background, for a massless fermion which is Yukawa-coupled to a massless, minimally coupled scalar. We then solve the modified Dirac equation resulting from inclusion of the self energy. We find faster-than-exponential growth in the fermion wave function, consistent with the production of fermions through a process in which a scalar and a fermion-anti-fermion pair are ripped out of the vacuum by inflation.
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0309593