A Goldstone boson equivalence for inflation

Bibliographic Details
Title: A Goldstone boson equivalence for inflation
Authors: Daniel Green, Kshitij Gupta, Yiwen Huang
Source: Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol 2024, Iss 9, Pp 1-32 (2024)
Publisher Information: SpringerOpen, 2024.
Publication Year: 2024
Collection: LCC:Nuclear and particle physics. Atomic energy. Radioactivity
Subject Terms: de Sitter space, Effective Field Theories, Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking, Cosmological models, Nuclear and particle physics. Atomic energy. Radioactivity, QC770-798
More Details: Abstract The effective field theory of single-field inflation characterizes the inflationary epoch in terms of a pattern of symmetry breaking. An operator acquires a time-dependent vacuum expectation value, defining a preferred spatial slicing. In the absence of dynamical gravity, the fluctuations around the time-dependent background are described by the Goldstone boson associated with this symmetry breaking process. With gravity, the Goldstone is eaten by the metric, becoming the scalar metric fluctuation. In this paper, we will show that in general single-field inflation, the statistics of scalar metric fluctuations are given by the statistics of this Goldstone boson decoupled from gravity up to corrections that are controlled as an expansion in slow-roll parameters. This even holds in the presence of additional parameters, like the speed of sound, that naively enhance the impact of the gravitational terms. In the process, we derive expressions for leading and sub-leading gravitational corrections to all-orders in the Goldstone boson.
Document Type: article
File Description: electronic resource
Language: English
ISSN: 1029-8479
Relation: https://doaj.org/toc/1029-8479
DOI: 10.1007/JHEP09(2024)117
Access URL: https://doaj.org/article/d960f4ff5d6e40a2b3a2747de33f9841
Accession Number: edsdoj.960f4ff5d6e40a2b3a2747de33f9841
Database: Directory of Open Access Journals
More Details
ISSN:10298479
DOI:10.1007/JHEP09(2024)117
Published in:Journal of High Energy Physics
Language:English