Inflationary consistency conditions from a wavefunctional perspective

Abstract

It is shown that the squeezed limit of inflationary expectation values follows from reparametrization invariance of the wavefunction of the universe. This translates into a constraint on the longitudinal modes of functional derivatives of the wavefunction. Thus, the local non-Gaussianity induced by single field inflation is purely a gauge artifact. We focus on Einstein gravity in de Sitter space and single field inflation, although the formalism only relies on the diffeomorphism invariance of the theory, and thus applies to any theory of gravity.

Holographic inflation and the conservation of ζ

“…[22,23] and ref. [24].) The holographic description of inflation has also been studied by using the so-called domain wall/cosmology correspondence, where cosmological solutions are constructed by analytically continuing from domain wall solutions [25][26][27][28][29][30] (see also ref.…”

Primordial fluctuations in extended Liouville theory

“…The constraints are expressed most easily in terms of the conjugate momenta. Let us parametrize the metric in 1+1d as 10) where the lapse N τ and shift N x play the role of Lagrange multipliers in the Hamiltonian formalism. Here τ is conformal time, and the scale factor is a 2 = g xx = e 2φ .…”

“…Strictly speaking, the upper terminal of the time integral in (5.8) should be equal to τ * , but the additional contribution from the interval τ ∈ (τ * , 0) is dwarfed by the contribution before horizon crossing, τ < τ * . Hence we can approximate the time integral by 10) where P denotes the sum of the energies (magnitudes) carried by the three momenta,…”

“…Recently much attention has been devoted to Ward identities for cosmological correlation functions [7][8][9][10]. These identities may be understood to arise from residual diffeomorphism symmetry.…”

“…The three-point function (bispectrum) in single field inflation was computed in [6], a calculation which has been extended to many other models of inflation. More recently there has been interest in the consequences of Ward identities for cosmological correlation functions, arising from spatial diffeomorphisms and conformal symmetry [7][8][9][10].…”