ON THE STOCHASTIC EVOLUTION OF THE INFLATON FIELD

Abstract

During the inflationary regime, the expansion of the Universe is driven by a scalar field ϕ(t) which may be in thermal contact with the radiation fluid. In this work, we study the influence of the thermal bath assuming that it is responsible for the stochastic evolution of the inflaton field. Assuming that the fluctuation dynamics is described by a Langevin-type equation of motion, a large set of analytical solutions including white and colored noises are derived. It is found that even in the case of white noise the field experience an anomalous diffusion. Such results may be important for studying thermally induced initial density perturbations in inflationary cosmologies, mainly in the framework of warm inflation.