Non-unitary evolution in the general extended EFT of inflation \& excited initial states

DOI10.1007/JHEP12(2018)012zbMATH Open1405.83044arXiv1807.06511MaRDI QIDQ1712293FDOQ1712293

Authors: Amjad Ashoorioon 

Publication date: 21 January 2019

Published in: Journal of High Energy Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: I study the "general" case that arises in the Extended Effective Field Theory of Inflation (gEEFToI), in which the coefficients of the sixth order polynomial dispersion relation depend on the physical wavelength of the fluctuation mode, hence they are time-dependent. At arbitrarily short wavelengths the unitarity is lost for each mode. Depending on the values of the gEEFToI parameters in the unitary gauge action, two scenarios can arise: in one, the coefficients of the polynomial become singular, flip signs at some physical wavelength and asymptote to a constant value as the wavelength of the mode is stretched to infinity. Starting from the WKB vacuum, the two-point function is essentially singular in the infinite IR limit. In the other case, the coefficients of the dispersion relation evolve monotonically from zero to a constant value in the infinite IR. In order to have a finite power spectrum starting from the vacuum in this case, the mode function has to be an eigensolution of the Confluent Heun (CH) equation, which leads to a very confined parameter space for gEEFToI. Finally, I look at a solution of the CH equation which is regular in the infinite IR limit and yields a finite power spectrum in either scenario. I demonstrate that this solution asymptotes to an excited state in past infinity in both cases. The result is interpreted in the light of the loss of unitarity for very small wavelengths. The outcome of such a non-unitary phase evolution should prepare each mode in the excited initial state that yields a finite two-point function for all the parameter space. This will be constraining of the new physics that UV completes such scenarios.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.06511

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zbMATH Keywords

cosmology of theories beyond the SMeffective field theories

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Methods of quantum field theory in general relativity and gravitational theory (83C47) Relativistic gravitational theories other than Einstein's, including asymmetric field theories (83D05) Relativistic cosmology (83F05) Astrophysical cosmology (85A40)

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Cited In (11)

• Let effective field theory of inflation flow: stochastic generation of models with red/blue tensor tilt
• Inflationary cosmology with quantum gravitational effects and swampland conjectures
• Non-Gaussianities in the extended EFT of inflation
• NONCLASSICAL STATE REPRESENTATION OF INFLATON AND POWER-LAW EXPANSION IN FRW UNIVERSE
• Constraining violations of the weak equivalence principle in the dark sector
• Mimetic inflation
• Heun-type solutions of the Klein-Gordon and Dirac equations in the Garfinkle-Horowitz-Strominger dilaton black hole background
• Non-linear trans-Planckian corrections of spectra due to the non-trivial initial states
• Inflation with 0 ≤ c _s ≤ 1
• Extended effective field theory of inflation
• Inflationary perturbation spectrum in extended effective field theory of inflation

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