Beyond perturbation theory in inflation

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Abstract: Inflationary perturbations are approximately Gaussian and deviations from Gaussianity are usually calculated using in-in perturbation theory. This method, however, fails for unlikely events on the tail of the probability distribution: in this regime non-Gaussianities are important and perturbation theory breaks down for |zeta|gtrsim|fmscriptscriptstyleNL|−1. In this paper we show that this regime is amenable to a semiclassical treatment, hbaro0. In this limit the wavefunction of the Universe can be calculated in saddle-point, corresponding to a resummation of all the tree-level Witten diagrams. The saddle can be found by solving numerically the classical (Euclidean) non-linear equations of motion, with prescribed boundary conditions. We apply these ideas to a model with an inflaton self-interaction proptolambdadotzeta4. Numerical and analytical methods show that the tail of the probability distribution of zeta goes as exp(−lambda−1/4zeta3/2), with a clear non-perturbative dependence on the coupling. Our results are relevant for the calculation of the abundance of primordial black holes.





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