English

Inflationary Correlation Functions without Infrared Divergences

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2015-05-27 v4 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Inflationary correlation functions are potentially affected by infrared divergences. For example, the two-point correlator of curvature perturbation at momentum k receives corrections ~ln(kL), where L is the size of the region in which the measurement is performed. We define infrared-safe correlation functions which have no sensitivity to the size L of the box used for the observation. The conventional correlators with their familiar log-enhanced corrections (both from scalar and tensor long-wavelength modes) are easily recovered from our IR-safe correlation functions. Among other examples, we illustrate this by calculating the corrections to the non-Gaussianity parameter f_NL coming from long-wavelength tensor modes. In our approach, the IR corrections automatically emerge in a resummed, all-orders form. For the scalar corrections, the resulting all-orders expression can be evaluated explicitly.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1102.0560,
  title  = {Inflationary Correlation Functions without Infrared Divergences},
  author = {Mischa Gerstenlauer and Arthur Hebecker and Gianmassimo Tasinato},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1102.0560},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

25 pages, v2,v3: Referencing improved, v4: improved explanations, extra references

R2 v1 2026-06-21T17:20:51.116Z