Open Effective Field Theory and the Physics of Cosmological Collider Signals
Fuente:
arXiv
Salvato in:
| Autori principali: | , , |
|---|---|
| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2025
|
| Soggetti: | |
| Accesso online: | |
| Tags: |
Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
|
| _version_ | 1866908699341094912 |
|---|---|
| author | Colas, Thomas Qin, Zhehan Tong, Xi |
| author_facet | Colas, Thomas Qin, Zhehan Tong, Xi |
| contents | We examine the origin of the cosmological collider signal using the framework of open effective field theories. Focusing on the single exchange of a massive scalar field, we demonstrate that the trispectrum splits cleanly into its local and non-local components once the heavy-field propagators are decomposed in the Keldysh basis. Integrating out the massive degree of freedom yields a single-field effective field theory for the light scalar that necessarily contains both unitary operators and non-unitary contributions associated with dissipation and stochastic noise. We show that the leading local signal in parity-preserving theories arises from the unitary part of this effective field theory, whereas the non-local signal is intrinsically associated with its stochastic sector. The effective field theory coefficients themselves are a priori non-analytic in the external kinematics; however, this non-analyticity can be softened when a scale hierarchy - such as the heavy-mass expansion - is imposed, up to spurious contributions that ultimately cancel in observables. Finally, we establish a connection between the cosmological collider signal and entropy production, linking the observable non-local signal to intrinsic properties of the quantum state, including its degree of mixedness. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_07941 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Open Effective Field Theory and the Physics of Cosmological Collider Signals Colas, Thomas Qin, Zhehan Tong, Xi High Energy Physics - Theory Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology We examine the origin of the cosmological collider signal using the framework of open effective field theories. Focusing on the single exchange of a massive scalar field, we demonstrate that the trispectrum splits cleanly into its local and non-local components once the heavy-field propagators are decomposed in the Keldysh basis. Integrating out the massive degree of freedom yields a single-field effective field theory for the light scalar that necessarily contains both unitary operators and non-unitary contributions associated with dissipation and stochastic noise. We show that the leading local signal in parity-preserving theories arises from the unitary part of this effective field theory, whereas the non-local signal is intrinsically associated with its stochastic sector. The effective field theory coefficients themselves are a priori non-analytic in the external kinematics; however, this non-analyticity can be softened when a scale hierarchy - such as the heavy-mass expansion - is imposed, up to spurious contributions that ultimately cancel in observables. Finally, we establish a connection between the cosmological collider signal and entropy production, linking the observable non-local signal to intrinsic properties of the quantum state, including its degree of mixedness. |
| title | Open Effective Field Theory and the Physics of Cosmological Collider Signals |
| topic | High Energy Physics - Theory Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.07941 |