We elaborate on the functional integral describing the stochastic dynamics of a spectator field during inflation, comparing its diagrammatic expansion to that obtained directly from a perturbative solution of the corresponding Langevin equation. We state Feynman rules for computing arbitrary temporal $n$-point functions and perform some illustrative computations for a $λϕ^4$ interaction, paying attention to the role played by a functional Jacobian determinant in the path integral. We also briefly consider the case when the field contributes to the expansion rate, making the noise multiplicative, which introduces additional vertices.
We develop the systematics for applying operators on Minkowski correlation functions to get the inflationary correlation functions. Simple structures and recursion relations are known for Minkowski correlation functions. Using the operator technique, various novel recursion relations for inflationary correlation functions are obtained.
In this paper we use conformal field theory techniques to constrain the form of the correlations functions of an inflationary scalar-vector model described by the interaction term $f_1(ϕ)F_{μν}F^{μν} + f_2(ϕ)\tilde{F}_{μν}F^{μν}$. We use the fact that the conformal group is the relevant symmetry group acting on super horizon scales in an inflationary de Sitter background. As a result, we find that super horizon conformal symmetry, constraints the form of the coupling functions $f_1, f_2$ to be homogeneous functions of the same degree. We derive the general form of the correlators involving sca…
Scattering amplitudes at weak coupling are highly constrained by Lorentz invariance, locality and unitarity, and depend on model details only through coupling constants and particle content. In this paper, we develop an understanding of inflationary correlators which parallels that of flat-space scattering amplitudes. Specifically, we study slow-roll inflation with weak couplings to extra massive particles, for which all correlators are controlled by an approximate conformal symmetry on the boundary of the spacetime. After classifying all possible contact terms in de Sitter space, we derive an…
We provide a general formalism to calculate the infrared correlators of multiple interacting scalar fields in the de Sitter space by means of the stochastic approach. These scalar fields are treated as test fields and hence our result is applicable to the models such as the curvaton scenario where the fields that yield initially isocurvature modes do not contribute to the cosmic energy density during inflationary expansion. The stochastic formalism combined with the argument of conformal invariance of the correlators reflecting the de Sitter isometries allows us to fix the form and amplitude o…
We study the multifield inflationary models where the cosmological perturbation is sourced by light scalar fields other than the inflaton. The corresponding perturbations are both scale invariant and special conformally invariant. We exploit the operator product expansion technique of conformal field theories to study the inflationary correlators enjoying the symmetries present during the de Sitter epoch. The operator product expansion is particularly powerful in characterizing inflationary correlation functions in two observationally interesting limits, the squeezed limit of the three-point c…
We use conformal symmetry to constrain the shape of inflationary correlators in the presence of long-lived vector field perturbations. Applying conformal Ward identities, we derive general expressions, up to amplitudes and normalization factors, for the two and three point correlators in the presence of vector fields mediated by the interaction $f(ϕ)\left(F_{μν}F^{μν}+α\tilde{F}_{μν}F^{μν}\right)$, where $f(ϕ)$ is a suitable coupling function between the scalar and the vector field. The previous interaction allows for isotropy and parity symmetry breaking and is consistent with super horizon c…
Cosmological Correlator Discontinuities from Scattering Amplitudes
University of Southampton（南安普顿大学）；Imperial College（帝国理工学院）；Durham University（杜伦大学）；University of Amsterdam（阿姆斯特丹大学）；Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München（慕尼黑大学）
A diagrammatic approach to calculate n-point correlators of the primordial curvature perturbation ζwas developed a few years ago following the spirit of the Feynman rules in Quantum Field Theory. The methodology is very useful and time-saving, as it is for the case of the Feynman rules in the particle physics context, but, unfortunately, is not very well known by the cosmology community. In the present work, we extend such an approach in order to include not only scalar field perturbations as the generators of ζ, but also vector field perturbations. The purpose is twofold: first, we would like…
Using a semiclassical approach to Gravitoelectromagnetic Inflation (GEMI), we study the origin and evolution of seminal inflaton and electromagnetic fields in the early inflationary universe from a 5D vacuum state. We use simultaneously the Lorentz and Feynman gauges. Our formalism is naturally not conformal invariant on the effective 4D de Sitter metric, which make possible the super adiabatic amplification of electric and magnetic field modes during the early inflationary epoch of the universe on cosmological scales. This is the first time that solutions for the electric field fluctuations a…
Inflationary correlation functions are potentially affected by infrared divergences. For example, the two-point correlator of curvature perturbation at momentum k receives corrections ~ln(kL), where L is the size of the region in which the measurement is performed. We define infrared-safe correlation functions which have no sensitivity to the size L of the box used for the observation. The conventional correlators with their familiar log-enhanced corrections (both from scalar and tensor long-wavelength modes) are easily recovered from our IR-safe correlation functions. Among other examples, we…
Locality in effective field theory for inflationary soft modes
Kyoto University（京都大学）；Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University（京都大学汤川理论物理研究所）；Institute of Particle and Nuclear Studies, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK)（高能加速器研究机构粒子核研究研究所）；The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI)（综合研究大学院大学）
We provide a parametric representation for position-space Feynman integrals of a massive, self-interacting scalar field in deSitter spacetime, for an arbitrary graph. The expression is given as a multiple contour integral over a kernel whose structure is determined by the set of all trees (or forests) within the graph, and it belongs to a class of generalized hypergeometric functions. We argue from this representation that connected deSitter $n$-point vacuum correlation functions have exponential decay for large proper time-separation, and also decay for large spatial separation, to arbitrary …
We use holographic techniques to compute inflationary non-Gaussianities for general single-field inflation, including models with a non-trivial sound speed. In this holographic approach, the inflationary dynamics is captured by a relevant deformation of the dual conformal field theory (CFT) in the UV, while the inflationary correlators are computed by conformal perturbation theory. In this paper, we discuss the effects of higher derivative operators, such as $(\partial_μϕ\partial^μϕ)^{m}$, which are known to induce a non-trivial sound speed and source potentially large non-Gaussianities. We co…
This is a version of the author's Ph.D. thesis. The methods of effective field theory are used to study generic theories of inflation with a single inflaton field and to perform a general analysis of the associated non-Gaussianities. We investigate the amplitudes and shapes of the various three and four-point correlators which are generated by different classes of single-field inflationary models. Besides the well-known results for the so called P(X,ϕ) model and the ghost inflationary theories, which we recover, we point out that extrinsic curvature-generated interactions may give rise to larg…
Cosmological perturbations of massive higher-spin fields are generated during inflation, but they decay on scales larger than the Hubble radius as a consequence of the Higuchi bound. By introducing suitable couplings to the inflaton field, we show that one can obtain statistical correlators of massive higher-spin fields which remain constant or decay very slowly outside the Hubble radius. This opens up the possibility of new observational signatures from inflation.
This thesis is centered on three main subjects within the theory of inflation and cosmological perturbations: loop corrections to the power spectrum of curvature fluctuations generated during inflation; evolution of cosmological fluctuations in anisotropic pre-inflationary cosmologies; statistical anisotropy and non-Gaussianity predictions of models of inflation populated with vector fields. Currently, what makes even more interesting the study of 2-nd and higher order corrections to cosmological correlation functions as well as the computation of higher-than-two order correlators, is the almo…
During inflation, the geometry of spacetime is described by a (quasi-)de Sitter phase. Inflationary observables are determined by the underlying (softly broken) de Sitter isometry group SO(1, 4) which acts like a conformal group on R^3: when the fluctuations are on super-Hubble scales, the correlators of the scalar fields are constrained by conformal invariance. Heavy fields with mass m larger than the Hubble rate H correspond to operators with imaginary dimensions in the dual Euclidean three-dimensional conformal field theory. By making use of the dS/CFT correspondence we show that, besides t…
We use the dS/CFT correspondence and bulk gravity to predict the form of the renormalized holographic three-point correlation function of the operator which is dual to the inflaton field perturbation during single-field, slow-roll inflation. Using Maldcaena's formulation of the correspondence, this correlator can be related to the three-point function of the curvature perturbation generated during single-field inflation, and we find exact agreement with previous bulk QFT calculations. This provides a consistency check on existing derivations of the non-Gaussianity from single-field inflation a…
We study the structure of two-point correlators of the inflationary field fluctuations in order to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the existing methods to calculate primordial spectra. We present a description motivated by the separation of the fast and slow evolving components of the spectrum which is based on Cholesky decomposition of the field correlator matrix. Our purpose is to rewrite all the relevant equations of motion in terms of slowly varying quantities. This is important in order to consider the contribution from high-frequency modes to the spectrum without affecting computa…
We study the multifield inflationary models where the cosmological perturbation is sourced by light scalar fields other than the inflaton. We exploit the operator product expansion and partly the symmetries present during the de Sitter epoch to characterize the non-Gaussian four-point correlator in the squeezed limit. We point out that the contribution to it from the intrinsic non-Gaussianity of the light fields at horizon crossing can be larger than the usually studied contribution arising on superhorizon scales and it comes with a different shape. Our findings indicate that particular attent…
We study how inflationary observables associated with primordial tensor modes are affected by coupling the minimal field content with an extra spin-2 particle during inflation. We work with a model that is ghost-free at the fully non-linear level and show how the new degrees of freedom modify standard consistency relations for the tensor bispectrum. The extra interacting spin-2 field is necessarily massive and unitarity dictates its mass be in the $m \gtrsim H$ range. Despite the fact that this bound selects a decaying solution for the corresponding tensor mode, cosmological correlators still …
We show that inflationary models with broken rotational invariance generate testable off-diagonal signatures in the correlation between the $μ$-type distortion and temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background. More precisely, scenarios with a quadrupolar bispectrum asymmetry, usually generated by fluctuations of primordial vector fields, produce a nonvanishing $μ$-$T$ correlation when $|\ell_1-\ell_2|=2$. Since spectral distortions are sensitive to primordial fluctuations up to very small scales, a cosmic variance limited spectral distortion experiment can detect such effects wi…
We calculate the tree-level bispectrum of the inflaton field perturbation directly from the field equations, and construct the corresponding f_NL parameter. Our results agree with previous ones derived from the Lagrangian. We argue that quantum theory should only be used to calculate the correlators when they first become classical a few Hubble times after horizon exit, the classical evolution taking over thereafter.
Reconstructing cosmological correlators via dispersion: from cutting to dressing rules
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur（坎普尔印度理工学院）；International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS-TIFR) Tata Institute of Fundamental Research（理论科学国际中心（ICTS-TIFR）塔塔基础研究所）
本文通过色散关系重构宇宙相关函数，利用切割规则和 dressing 规则，揭示了从树级 de Sitter 威滕图到晚期时间片相关函数的联系。
We study the soft limits of cosmological correlators from a holographic perspective, showing how the inflationary consistency relations arise from the diffeomorphism invariance of the dual quantum field theory. Starting from the corresponding Ward identity, by taking moments we derive the leading and subleading behaviour of the stress tensor 3-point function in the limit as one momentum vanishes. These results are non-perturbative and valid in quantum field theories of a very general nature. Exploiting the known mapping of correlators in the dual quantum field theory to those of the cosmology,…
On Cosmological Correlators with Boundary Contributions
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学）；Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学赛马会高等研究院）；University of Cambridge（剑桥大学）
Kontorovich-Lebedev-Fourier Space for de Sitter Correlators
Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, CNRS, Sorbonne Université（巴黎天文台，法国国家科学研究中心，索邦大学）；Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, Werner-Heisenberg-Institut（马克斯·普朗克物理研究所，维尔纳·海森堡研究所）；Max Planck-IAS-NTU Center for Particle Physics, Cosmology and Geometry（马克斯·普朗克粒子物理、宇宙学与几何中心）
It is widely accepted that the Feynman integral is one of the most promising methodologies for defining a generally covariant formulation of nonperturbative interacting quantum field theories (QFTs) without a fixed prearranged causal background. Recent literature suggests that if the spacetime metric is not fixed, e.g. because it is to be quantized along with the other fields, one may not be able to avoid considering the Feynman integral in the original Lorentz signature, without Wick rotation. Several mathematical phenomena are known, however, which are at some point showstoppers to a mathema…
Spacetime is conventionally viewed as a stage on which actors, in the form of fields, move. Here, we explore what may lie beyond this picture. The starting point is the observation that quantum fluctuations of fields are the more strongly correlated the shorter their spacetime distance. As a consequence, the notion of spacetime distance, including the metric as its infinitesimal version, can be replaced by the notion of correlation strength. This suggests a new picture in which abstract (2-point and multi-point) correlators are the primary structure. In general, these abstract correlators can …
We consider cosmological inflationary models in which vector fields play some role in the generation of the primordial curvature perturbation $ζ$. Such models are interesting because the involved vector fields naturally seed statistical anisotropy in the primordial fluctuations which could eventually leave a measurable imprint on the cosmic microwave background fluctuations. In this article, we estimate the scale and shape dependent effects on the non-Gaussianity (NG) parameters due to the scale dependent statistical anisotropy in the distribution of the fluctuations. For concreteness, we use …
Stochastic description of inflationary spacetimes emulates the growth of vacuum fluctuations by an effective stochastic ``noise field'' which drives the dynamics of the volume-smoothed inflaton. We investigate statistical properties of this field and find its correlator to be a function of distance measured in units of the smoothing length. Our results apply for a wide class of smoothing window functions and are different from previous calculations by Starobinsky and others who used a sharp momentum cutoff. We also discuss the applicability of some approximate noise descriptions to simulations…
