Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2021/ii/paper-1/15b/d/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2021 ii Paper 1 15B d Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
In the far past, , the term is negligible and the rescaled mode is a quantum harmonic oscillator of angular frequency . The stated choice of its ground state is the Bunch-Davies vacuum.
At late times, after the mode is far outside the Hubble scale, . Its variance becomesSince has dimensions of length cubed, the dimensionless power is proportional to . More precisely, with the standard isotropic Fourier convention,which is independent of the wavenumber . Thus equal logarithmic intervals in carry equal late-time power. This is the sense in which inflation naturally generates a scale-invariant inflationary power spectrum.
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