English

Multiple Soft Limits of Cosmological Correlation Functions

High Energy Physics - Theory 2015-01-13 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We derive novel identities satisfied by inflationary correlation functions in the limit where two external momenta are taken to be small. We derive these statements in two ways: using background-wave arguments and as Ward identities following from the fixed-time path integral. Interestingly, these identities allow us to constrain some of the O(q^2) components of the soft limit, in contrast to their single-soft analogues. We provide several nontrivial checks of our identities both in the context of resonant non-Gaussianities and in small sound speed models. Additionally, we extend the relation at lowest order in external momenta to arbitrarily many soft legs, and comment on the many-soft extension at higher orders in the soft momentum. Finally, we consider how higher soft limits lead to identities satisfied by correlation functions in large-scale structure.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1409.6318,
  title  = {Multiple Soft Limits of Cosmological Correlation Functions},
  author = {Austin Joyce and Justin Khoury and Marko Simonović},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.6318},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

39 pages, 2 figures. v2: minor corrections, added references. Version to appear in JCAP

R2 v1 2026-06-22T06:02:48.456Z