We discuss the impact of adiabatic renormalization on the power spectrum of scalar and tensor perturbations from inflation. We show that adiabatic regularization is ambiguous as it leads to very different results, for different adiabatic subtraction schemes, both in the range $v\equiv k/(aH) \gsim 0.1$ and in the infrared regime. All these schemes agree in the far ultraviolet, $v\gg 1$. Therefore, we argue that in the far infrared regime, $v\ll 1$, the adiabatic expansion is no longer valid, and the unrenormalized spectra are the physical, measurable quantities. These findings cast some doubt on the validity of the adiabatic subtraction at horizon exit, $v=1$, to determine the perturbation spectra from inflation which has recently advocated in the literature.
Fixing the Renormalization of Inflationary Loops via Ward Identities
Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院理论物理研究所）；School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学物理科学学院）；School of Fundamental Physics and Mathematical Sciences, Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学杭州高等研究院基础科学与数学学院）
We introduce a new approach to renormalize physical quantities in curved space-time by adiabatic subtraction. We use a comoving infrared cut-off in defining the adiabatic counterpart of the physical quantity under consideration, building on the fact that the adiabatic approximation is ill-defined in the infrared tail of the spectrum. We show how this infrared cut-off should be used to obtain a completely well-defined renormalization scheme and how it is fundamental to avoid unphysical divergences that can be generated by a pathological behavior of the adiabatic subtraction extended to the infr…
Inflationary relics from an Ultra-Slow-Roll plateau
Institute for Advanced Research, Nagoya University（名古屋大学高等研究院）；Department of Physics, Nagoya University（名古屋大学物理系）；Departament de Física Quàntica i Astrofiśica, i Institut de Ciències del Cosmos (ICCUB), Universitat de Barcelona（巴塞罗那大学量子天体物理学系及宇宙科学研究所）；Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院理论物理研究所）；Center for High Energy Physics, Peking University（北京大学高能物理中心）；Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (WPI), The University of Tokyo（东京大学 Kavli宇宙与物质起源研究前沿中心）
As a contribution to a viable candidate for a standard model of cosmology, we here show that pre-inflationary quantum fluctuations can provide a scenario for the long-sought initial conditions for the inflaton field. Our proposal is based on the assumption that at very high energies (higher than the energy scale of inflation) the vacuum-expectation value (VeV) of the field is trapped in a false vacuum and then, due to renormalization-group (RG) running, the potential starts to flatten out toward low energy, eventually tending to a convex one which allows the field to roll down to the true vacu…
One-loop renormalization of the effective field theory of inflationary fluctuations from gravitational interactions
New York University（纽约大学）；Laboratoire de Physique de l’École Normale Supérieure, ENS, CNRS, Université PSL, Sorbonne Université, Université Paris Cité（巴黎高等师范学院物理实验室，ENS，法国国家科学研究中心，巴黎文理研究大学，索邦大学，巴黎西岱大学）
We derive one- and two-loop renormalization group equations (RGEs) of Higgs-$R^2$ inflation. This model has a non-minimal coupling between the Higgs and the Ricci scalar and a Ricci scalar squared term on top of the standard model. The RGEs derived in this paper are valid as long as the energy scale of interest (in the Einstein frame) is below the Planck scale. We also discuss implications to the inflationary predictions and the electroweak vacuum metastability.
The origin of the $μ$G magnetic fields observed in galaxies is unknown. One promising scenario is that magnetic fields generated during inflation, larger than 0.1 nG on Mpc scales, were adiabatically compressed to $μ$G strengths in galaxies during structure formation. Thus, detecting a scale-invariant primordial magnetic field (PMF) above 0.1 nG on Mpc scales just after recombination would indicate an inflationary origin of galactic magnetic fields. This would also provide compelling evidence that inflation occurred since only an inflationary mechanism could generate such a strong, scale-invar…
In this paper, we investigate the primordial perturbations of inflation model induced from the multi-field mimetic gravity, where there are two field during inflation, and thus both adiabatic and isocurvature perturbation modes are generated. We show that although it is true that the original adiabatic perturbation mode loses the kinetic term due to the constraint equation, by applying the curvaton mechanism where one of the field is viewed as curvaton field, the adiabatic perturbation can actually be transferred from the isocurvature one at the end of inflation. Detailed calculations are perf…
CMB Constraints on Pre-Inflationary Axion Dark Matter Isocurvature
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics（哈佛-史密森天体物理中心）；Brown University（布朗大学）；CERN（欧洲核子研究组织）；Nanjing Normal University（南京师范大学）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）
We compute the inflationary perturbation spectra and the quantity $r+8n_{T}$ to the next-to-next-to-leading log order in quantum gravity with purely virtual particles (which means the theory $R+R^{2}+C^{2}$ with the fakeon prescription/projection for $C^{2}$). The spectra are functions of the inflationary running coupling $α(1/k)$ and satisfy the cosmic renormalization-group flow equations, which determine the tilts and the running coefficients. The tensor fluctuations receive contributions from the spin-2 fakeon $χ_{μν}$ at every order of the expansion in powers of $α\sim 1/115$. The dependen…
We study the generation of helical magnetic fields during inflation by considering a model which does not suffer from strong coupling or large back-reaction. Electromagnetic conformal invariance is broken only during inflation by coupling the gauge-invariants $F_{μν}F^{μν}$ and $F_{μν}{\tilde{F}}^{μν}$ to a time-dependent function $I$ with a sharp transition during inflation. The magnetic power spectrum is scale-invariant up to the transition and very blue-shifted after that. The subsequent evolution of the helical magnetic field is subjected to magneto-hydrodynamical processes, resulting in f…
