Stationary solutions in Brans-Dicke stochastic inflationary cosmology

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Abstract
In Brans-Dicke theory the Universe becomes divided after inflation into many exponentially large domains with different values of the effective gravitational constant. Such a process can be described by diffusion equations for the probability of finding a certain value of the inflaton and dilaton fields in a physical volume of the Universe. For a typical chaotic inflation potential, the solutions for the probability distribution never become stationary but grow forever toward large values of the fields. We show here that a nonminimal conformal coupling of the inflaton to the curvature scalar, as well as radiative corrections to the effective potential, may provide a dynamical cutoff and generate stationary solutions. We also analyze the possibility of large nonperturbative jumps of the fluctuating inflaton scalar field, which was recently revealed in the context of the Einstein theory. We find that in the Brans-Dicke theory the amplitude of such jumps is strongly suppressed. © 1995 The American Physical Society.
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