Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Scientific paper
2010-04-06
Phys.Rev.D82:023529,2010
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
(v1) 28 pages, no figures; (v2) 29 pages, minor changes, matches published version
Scientific paper
10.1103/PhysRevD.82.023529
The quantum theory of cosmological perturbations in single field inflation is formulated in terms of a path integral. Starting from a canonical formulation, we show how the free propagators can be obtained from the well known gauge-invariant quadratic action for scalar and tensor perturbations, and determine the interactions to arbitrary order. This approach does not require the explicit solution of the energy and momentum constraints, a novel feature which simplifies the determination of the interaction vertices. The constraints and the necessary imposition of gauge conditions is reflected in the appearance of various commuting and anti-commuting auxiliary fields in the action. These auxiliary fields are not propagating physical degrees of freedom but need to be included in internal lines and loops in a diagrammatic expansion. To illustrate the formalism we discuss the tree-level 3-point and 4-point functions of the inflaton perturbations, reproducing the results already obtained by the methods used in the current literature. Loop calculations are left for future work.
Prokopec Tomislav
Rigopoulos Gerasimos
No associations
LandOfFree
Path Integral for Inflationary Perturbations 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 Path Integral for Inflationary Perturbations, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Path Integral for Inflationary Perturbations will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-57692