Ermakov-Lewis invariant in single field inflation
High Energy Physics - Theory
2026-07-17 v1
Abstract
We investigate the dynamical symmetry of the Sasaki-Mukhanov equation, which governs the evolution of primordial perturbations during inflation. By mapping the Sasaki-Mukhanov equation to a constant-frequency harmonic oscillator via an auxiliary Ermakov field satisfying the Ermakov-Pinney equation, we construct the associated generators and derive the Ermakov-Lewis invariant. We apply this framework to de Sitter space and slow-roll inflation, demonstrating that the Bunch-Davies vacuum gives , conserved non-perturbatively at all orders in slow-roll.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2607.15630,
title = {Ermakov-Lewis invariant in single field inflation},
author = {Seoktae Koh},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.15630},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
13+1 pages; to be published in JKPS