Published December 2021 | Version Accepted Version
Journal Article Open

The inflationary wavefunction from analyticity and factorization

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Abstract

We study the analytic properties of tree-level wavefunction coefficients in quasi-de Sitter space. We focus on theories which spontaneously break dS boost symmetries and can produce significant non-Gaussianities. The corresponding inflationary correlators are (approximately) scale invariant, but are not invariant under the full conformal group. We derive cutting rules and dispersion formulas for the late-time wavefunction coefficients by using factorization and analyticity properties of the dS bulk-to-bulk propagator. This gives a unitarity method which is valid at tree-level for general n-point functions and for fields of arbitrary mass. Using the cutting rules and dispersion formulas, we are able to compute n-point functions by gluing together lower-point functions. As an application, we study general four-point, scalar exchange diagrams in the EFT of inflation. We show that exchange diagrams constructed from boost-breaking interactions can be written as a finite sum over residues. Finally, we explain how the dS identities used in this work are related by analytic continuation to analogous identities in Anti-de Sitter space.

Additional Information

© 2021 IOP Publishing Ltd and Sissa Medialab. Received 30 July 2021; Accepted 22 November 2021; Published 7 December 2021. We thank Sadra Jazayeri, Savan Kharel, Junyu Liu, Enrico Pajer, Julio Parra-Martinez, David Simmons-Duffin, and Allic Sivaramakrishnan for discussions. The research of DM is supported by the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Sherman Fairchild Foundation. This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics, under Award Number DE-SC0011632.

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Eprint ID
110988
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20210922-182507168

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Funding

Department of Energy (DOE)
DE-SC0011632
Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, Caltech

Dates

Created
2021-09-22
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Updated
2021-12-21
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Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics
Other Numbering System Name
CALT-TH
Other Numbering System Identifier
2021-028