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Cosmological Cutting Rules
- Source :
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol 2021, Iss 5, Pp 1-59 (2021), Journal of High Energy Physics
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- arXiv, 2021.
-
Abstract
- Primordial perturbations in our universe are believed to have a quantum origin, and can be described by the wavefunction of the universe (or equivalently, cosmological correlators). It follows that these observables must carry the imprint of the founding principle of quantum mechanics: unitary time evolution. Indeed, it was recently discovered that unitarity implies an infinite set of relations among tree-level wavefunction coefficients, dubbed the Cosmological Optical Theorem. Here, we show that unitarity leads to a systematic set of "Cosmological Cutting Rules" which constrain wavefunction coefficients for any number of fields and to any loop order. These rules fix the discontinuity of an n-loop diagram in terms of lower-loop diagrams and the discontinuity of tree-level diagrams in terms of tree-level diagrams with fewer external fields. Our results apply with remarkable generality, namely for arbitrary interactions of fields of any mass and any spin with a Bunch-Davies vacuum around a very general class of FLRW spacetimes. As an application, we show how one-loop corrections in the Effective Field Theory of inflation are fixed by tree-level calculations and discuss related perturbative unitarity bounds. These findings greatly extend the potential of using unitarity to bootstrap cosmological observables and to restrict the space of consistent effective field theories on curved spacetimes.<br />Comment: 48+11 pages, 5 figures
- Subjects :
- High Energy Physics - Theory
Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Infinite set
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
Field (physics)
media_common.quotation_subject
FOS: Physical sciences
QC770-798
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc)
01 natural sciences
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
symbols.namesake
Theoretical physics
Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric
Nuclear and particle physics. Atomic energy. Radioactivity
0103 physical sciences
Effective field theory
010306 general physics
media_common
Inflation (cosmology)
Physics
Unitarity
010308 nuclear & particles physics
Observable
Effective Field Theories
16. Peace & justice
Universe
High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
symbols
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Classical Theories of Gravity
Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Subjects
Details
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol 2021, Iss 5, Pp 1-59 (2021), Journal of High Energy Physics
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....7e5a37f5dd8a3f81122cf14a0872723f
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2103.09832