English

An Infinite Set of Ward Identities for Adiabatic Modes in Cosmology

High Energy Physics - Theory 2014-01-29 v3 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We show that the correlation functions of any single-field cosmological model with constant growing-modes are constrained by an infinite number of novel consistency relations, which relate (N+1)-point correlation functions with a soft-momentum scalar or tensor mode to a symmetry transformation on N-point correlation functions of hard-momentum modes. We derive these consistency relations from Ward identities for an infinite tower of non-linearly realized global symmetries governing scalar and tensor perturbations. These symmetries can be labeled by an integer n. At each order n, the consistency relations constrain - completely for n=0,1, and partially for n>= 2 - the q^n behavior of the soft limits. The identities at n=0 recover Maldacena's original consistency relations for a soft scalar and tensor mode, n=1 gives the recently-discovered conformal consistency relations, and the identities for n>= 2 are new. As a check, we verify directly that the n=2 identity is satisfied by known correlation functions in slow-roll inflation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1304.5527,
  title  = {An Infinite Set of Ward Identities for Adiabatic Modes in Cosmology},
  author = {Kurt Hinterbichler and Lam Hui and Justin Khoury},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1304.5527},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

47 pages. v3 typos corrected, matches published version