Soft Metric Fluctuations During Inflation

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Green, Daniel, Gupta, Kshitij
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Green, Daniel
Gupta, Kshitij
author_facet Green, Daniel
Gupta, Kshitij
contents The conservation of the long wavelength fluctuations of the metric plays a vital role in cosmology as the link between quantum fluctuations during inflation and late time observations. This is a well-known property of the classical evolution equations, but demonstrating that it is robust to quantum correction involves a number of technical arguments. In this paper, we will use effective field theory (EFT) techniques to demonstrate the all orders conservation of the super-horizon scalar and tensor fluctuations of the metric during inflation. We show how to construct an EFT for these soft modes, in analogy with Soft de Sitter Effective Theory. We pay particular attention to how the breaking of time-diffeomorphisms by the inflationary background introduces new time scales that alter the structure of the EFT. In this description, the all orders conservation of the metric fluctuations is a direct consequence of symmetries and power counting that cannot be altered by loop corrections. We further show that this holds when the inflaton (or metric fluctuations) is coupled to additional heavy fields, as in quasi-single field inflation. We match this behavior to several calculations in the ultraviolet (UV) theory and show how the Mellin representation enables a more transparent connection between the UV and the EFT descriptions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_11973
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Soft Metric Fluctuations During Inflation
Green, Daniel
Gupta, Kshitij
High Energy Physics - Theory
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
The conservation of the long wavelength fluctuations of the metric plays a vital role in cosmology as the link between quantum fluctuations during inflation and late time observations. This is a well-known property of the classical evolution equations, but demonstrating that it is robust to quantum correction involves a number of technical arguments. In this paper, we will use effective field theory (EFT) techniques to demonstrate the all orders conservation of the super-horizon scalar and tensor fluctuations of the metric during inflation. We show how to construct an EFT for these soft modes, in analogy with Soft de Sitter Effective Theory. We pay particular attention to how the breaking of time-diffeomorphisms by the inflationary background introduces new time scales that alter the structure of the EFT. In this description, the all orders conservation of the metric fluctuations is a direct consequence of symmetries and power counting that cannot be altered by loop corrections. We further show that this holds when the inflaton (or metric fluctuations) is coupled to additional heavy fields, as in quasi-single field inflation. We match this behavior to several calculations in the ultraviolet (UV) theory and show how the Mellin representation enables a more transparent connection between the UV and the EFT descriptions.
title Soft Metric Fluctuations During Inflation
topic High Energy Physics - Theory
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.11973