English

Correlation Functions in Stochastic Inflation

High Energy Physics - Theory 2016-12-01 v4 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

Combining the stochastic and δN\delta N formalisms, we derive non perturbative analytical expressions for all correlation functions of scalar perturbations in single-field, slow-roll inflation. The standard, classical formulas are recovered as saddle-point limits of the full results. This yields a classicality criterion that shows that stochastic effects are small only if the potential is sub-Planckian and not too flat. The saddle-point approximation also provides an expansion scheme for calculating stochastic corrections to observable quantities perturbatively in this regime. In the opposite regime, we show that a strong suppression in the power spectrum is generically obtained, and comment on the physical implications of this effect.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1506.04732,
  title  = {Correlation Functions in Stochastic Inflation},
  author = {Vincent Vennin and Alexei A. Starobinsky},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1506.04732},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

20 pages plus appendix, 4 figures, published in EPJC, typo corrected in Eq. (3.37)

R2 v1 2026-06-22T09:54:01.899Z