We show that the entropy of cosmological perturbations originating as quantum vacuum fluctuations in the very early universe, including the contribution of the leading nonlinear interactions, can be viewed as momentum space entanglement entropy between sub- and super-Hubble modes. The interactions between these modes cause decoherence of the super-Hubble fluctuations which, in turn, leads to a nonvanishing entropy of the reduced density matrix corresponding to the super-Hubble inhomogeneities. In particular, applying this to inflationary cosmology reveals that the entanglement entropy produced by leading order nonlinearities dominates over that coming from the squeezing of the vacuum state unless inflation lasts for a very short period. Furthermore, demanding that this entanglement entropy be smaller than the thermal entropy at the beginning of the radiation phase of standard cosmology leads to an upper bound on the duration of inflation which is similar to what is obtained from the trans-Planckian censorship conjecture.

• Received 1 June 2020
• Accepted 18 August 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.102.043529

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Published by the American Physical Society