6620, ITP South Building

 I explore the question of how to make an appropriate choice of initial state for metric quantum fluctuations. I’ll discuss general issues involving an effective theory of initial states and then focus on a specific class of initial states, the so-called entangled ones. These are states in which the metric fluctuations are entangled in a Gaussian state with fluctuations of a spectator scalar field. I’ll show how to construct these states, how to calculate cosmological observables with them and finally discuss how they might be dynamically generated.