Particle creation in inhomogeneous spacetimes

We study the creation of particles by inhomogeneous perturbations of spatially flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmologies. For massless scalar fields, the pair-creation probability can be expressed in terms of geometric quantities (curvature invariants). The results suggest that inhomogeneities on scales up to the particle horizon will be damped out near the Planck time. Perturbations on scales larger than the horizon are explicitly shown to yield no created pairs. The results generalize to inhomogeneous spacetimes several earlier studies of pair creation in homogeneous anisotropic cosmologies.