Decoupling Survives Inflation: A Critical Look at Effective Field Theory Violations During Inflation

Details Decoupling Survives Inflation: A Critical Look at Effective Field Theory Violations During Inflation Decoupling Survives Inflation: A Critical Look at Effective Field Theory Violations During Inflation

2012-02-29

arxiv.org/abs/1203.0016v2

Physics

High Energy Physics

High Energy Physics - Theory

42 Pages and 2 figures, references added

Scientific paper

We investigate the validity of effective field theory methods and the decoupling of heavy fields during inflation. Considering models of inflation in which the inflaton is coupled to a heavy (super-Hubble) degree of freedom initially in its vacuum state, we find that violations of decoupling are absent unless there is a breakdown of the slow-roll conditions. Next we allow for a temporary departure from inflation resulting in a period of non-adiabaticity during which effective field theory methods are known to fail. We find that the locality of the event and energy conservation lead to a tight bound on the size of the effects of the heavy field. We discuss the implications for the power spectrum and non-gaussianity, and comment on the connection with recent studies of the dynamics of multi-field inflation models. Our results further motivate the use of effective field theory methods to characterize cosmic inflation, and focus the question of observability of additional degrees of freedom during inflation to near the Hubble scale or below - as anticipated from the Wilsonian notions of decoupling and naturalness.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Decoupling Survives Inflation: A Critical Look at Effective Field Theory Violations During Inflation does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Decoupling Survives Inflation: A Critical Look at Effective Field Theory Violations During Inflation, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Decoupling Survives Inflation: A Critical Look at Effective Field Theory Violations During Inflation will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-345473