Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2021/iii/paper-310/4/c/solution

At leading order in , the inflationary Fourier mode and its derivative are
Thus the leading parts of and contain the same quadrature of the creation and annihilation operators and satisfy
Their commutator consequently vanishes in this leading approximation. The exact nonzero result in part b is carried by the subleading decaying mode. Relative to the rapidly growing anticommutator, its effect is suppressed by powers of , which is the squeezing captured by the classicality parameter of a cosmological perturbation. The perturbation can therefore be treated as an effectively classical stochastic field on superhorizon scales even though its exact quantum commutator is unchanged.

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