Decoherence Effects on Primordial Black Holes and Scalar-Induced Gravitational Waves

Abstract

Primordial black holes (PBHs) form when large primordial curvature perturbations re-enter the Hubble radius and exceed the classical collapse threshold. These perturbations originate as quantum fluctuations of the inflationary vacuum, motivating a quantum-information description of the PBH-producing scalar sector. We develop a conservative extension of the standard PBH and scalar-induced gravitational-wave (SIGW) framework in which Gaussian quantum discord is used as a diagnostic of residual quantum correlations, not as a new PBH-formation criterion. We describe each \((\bm k,-\bm k)\) pair as a two-mode Gaussian state and show that, in the pure squeezed limit, discord grows rapidly with the squeezing parameter, so low discord thresholds are automatically satisfied for strongly squeezed modes. The nontrivial regime is the mixed state produced by decoherence. Using a Lindblad open-system description, we motivate a Gaussian loss channel for the scalar covariance matrix and distinguish the discord from a covariance-survival factor \(Q_{\rm dec}(k)\). If the decoherence channel suppresses the scalar two-point covariance, PBH abundance can be affected through the classical collapse variance, while the SIGW spectrum is modified more directly by the factors \(Q_{\rm dec}(ku)Q_{\rm dec}(kv)\) inside the radiation-era convolution. For a narrow scalar peak and slowly varying \(Q_{\rm dec}\), this gives the benchmark scaling \(Ω_{\rm GW}^{\rm eff}\simeq Q_{\rm dec}^2Ω_{\rm GW}^{\rm class}\). Thus quantum discord and decoherence provide a controlled way to characterize the quantum-to-classical transition of PBH-producing perturbations, with the clearest imprint appearing in scalar-induced gravitational waves.