The noise of vacuum

Abstract We investigate the evolution of primordial cosmological perturbations in a vacuum decay model where de Sitter space transitions to radiation domination through quantum-thermal decay processes. Unlike standard inflation, this framework generates curvature perturbations through stochastic noise from vacuum decay rather than quantum fluctuations of an inflaton field. We derive the stochastic differential equation governing the curvature perturbation ℛ( t ) and show that any horizon crossing is brief and does not constitute the primary mechanism for perturbation generation. Scale dependence emerges from spatial correlations in the noise rather than horizon crossing dynamics. The model naturally addresses the horizon and flatness problems through initial thermal equilibrium in de Sitter space and predicts zero tensor-to-scalar ratio. We demonstrate that spatially correlated noise can generate observationally viable spectral tilts while maintaining Gaussian statistics.