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Schwinger-Keldysh Diagrammatics for Primordial Perturbations

High Energy Physics - Theory 2017-12-06 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We present a systematic introduction to the diagrammatic method for practical calculations in inflationary cosmology, based on Schwinger-Keldysh path integral formalism. We show in particular that the diagrammatic rules can be derived directly from a classical Lagrangian even in the presence of derivative couplings. Furthermore, we use quasi-single-field inflation as an example to show how this formalism, combined with the trick of mixed propagator, can significantly simplify the calculation of some in-in correlation functions. The resulting bispectrum includes the lighter scalar case (m<3H/2m<3H/2) that has been previously studied, and the heavier scalar case (m>3H/2m>3H/2) that has not been explicitly computed for this model. The latter provides a concrete example of quantum primordial standard clocks, in which the clock signals can be observably large.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1703.10166,
  title  = {Schwinger-Keldysh Diagrammatics for Primordial Perturbations},
  author = {Xingang Chen and Yi Wang and Zhong-Zhi Xianyu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.10166},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

40 pages. JCAP published version