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Title: Open EFTs, IR effects & late-time resummations: systematic corrections in stochastic inflation

Journal Article · · Journal of High Energy Physics (Online)
 [1];  [2];  [3]
  1. McMaster Univ., Hamilton, ON (Canada). Physics & Astronomy; Perimeter Inst. for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, ON (Canada)
  2. Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA (United States). Physics Dept.
  3. Swansea Univ., Swansea (United Kingdom). Dept. of Physics

Though simple inflationary models describe the CMB well, their corrections are often plagued by infrared effects that obstruct a reliable calculation of late-time behaviour. Here we adapt to cosmology tools designed to address similar issues in other physical systems with the goal of making reliable late-time inflationary predictions. The main such tool is Open EFTs which reduce in the inflationary case to Stochastic Inflation plus calculable corrections. We apply this to a simple inflationary model that is complicated enough to have dangerous IR behaviour yet simple enough to allow the inference of late-time behaviour. We find corrections to standard Stochastic Inflationary predictions for the noise and drift, and we find these corrections ensure the IR finiteness of both these quantities. The late-time probability distribution, P(Φ), for super-Hubble field fluctuations are obtained as functions of the noise and drift and so these too are IR finite. We compare our results to other methods (such as large-N models) and find they agree when these models are reliable. In all cases we can explore in detail we find IR secular effects describe the slow accumulation of small perturbations to give a big effect: a significant distortion of the late-time probability distribution for the field. But the energy density associated with this is only of order H4 at late times and so does not generate a dramatic gravitational back-reaction.

Research Organization:
McMaster Univ., Hamilton, ON (Canada)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP); Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC); National Science Foundation (NSF)
Grant/Contract Number:
FG03-91ER40682; FG02-91ER40682
OSTI ID:
1393417
Journal Information:
Journal of High Energy Physics (Online), Vol. 2016, Issue 1; ISSN 1029-8479
Publisher:
Springer BerlinCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 81 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (16)

Divergences in open quantum systems journal April 2018
Inflationary stochastic anomalies journal March 2019
Thermal interpretation of infrared dynamics in de Sitter journal July 2016
Effective long wavelength scalar dynamics in de Sitter journal May 2017
Can all the infrared secular growth really be understood as increase of classical statistical variance? journal November 2018
Stochastic inflation beyond slow roll journal July 2019
Boundary crossing in stochastic inflation with a critical number of fields journal October 2019
Stochastic effects in anisotropic inflation journal January 2020
Horizon feedback inflation journal April 2018
Decoherence, discord, and the quantum master equation for cosmological perturbations journal May 2017
Decoherence, discord and the quantum master equation for cosmological perturbations text January 2017
The quantum Fokker-Planck equation of stochastic inflation text January 2017
Inflationary stochastic anomalies text January 2018
Stochastic inflation beyond slow roll text January 2019
Boundary Crossing in Stochastic Inflation with Critical Number of Fields text January 2019
Stochastic Effects in Anisotropic Inflation text January 2019

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