Cosmological complexity
Arpan Bhattacharyya, Saurya Das, S. Shajidul Haque, Bret Underwood
Abstract
We compute the quantum circuit complexity of the evolution of scalar curvature perturbations on expanding backgrounds, using the language of squeezed vacuum states. In particular, we construct a simple cosmological model consisting of an early-time period of de Sitter expansion followed by a radiation-dominated era and track the evolution of complexity throughout this history. During early-time de Sitter expansion the complexity grows linearly with the number of e-folds for modes outside the horizon. The evolution of complexity also suggests that the Universe behaves like a chaotic system during this era, for which we propose a scrambling time and Lyapunov exponent. During the radiation-dominated era, however, the complexity decreases until it ``freezes in'' after horizon reentry, leading to a ``decomplexification'' of the Universe.