Effective Field Theory for Inflation

Abstract

The methods of effective field theory are used to study generic theories of inflation with a single inflaton field. For scalar modes, the leading corrections to the $\mathcal{R}$ correlation function are found to be purely of the $k$-inflation type. For tensor modes the leading corrections to the correlation function arise from terms in the action that are quadratic in the curvature, including a parity-violating term that makes the propagation of these modes depend on their helicity. These methods are also briefly applied to non-generic theories of inflation with an extra shift symmetry, as in so-called ghost inflation.

14 pages, Latex, references added and minor additions and corrections made

References in corpus (10)

• Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Three Year Results: Implications for Cosmology
• The Effective Field Theory of Inflation
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• Realizing Scale-invariant Density Perturbations in Low-energy Effective String Theory
• The New Ekpyrotic Ghost
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• Future of the universe in modified gravitational theories: Approaching to the finite-time future singularity
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• Extreme- and Intermediate-Mass Ratio Inspirals in Dynamical Chern-Simons Modified Gravity
• Dirichlet boundary value problem for Chern-Simons modified gravity
• Null Energy Condition Violation and Classical Stability in the Bianchi I Metric
• Where does Cosmological Perturbation Theory Break Down?
• Nonlinear superhorizon perturbations of non-canonical scalar field
• Short Distance Physics and Initial State Effects on the CMB Power Spectrum
• Tachyon-Dilaton-induced Inflation as an alpha'-resummed String Background
• Constraining Modified Gravity with Large non-Gaussianities