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 (2)

• Circular Polarization of Primordial Gravitational Waves in String-inspired Inflationary Cosmology
• Accelerating Cosmologies in the Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet Theory with Dilaton

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Dirichlet boundary value problem for Chern-Simons modified gravity