Where does Cosmological Perturbation Theory Break Down?

Abstract

We apply the effective field theory approach to the coupled metric-inflaton system, in order to investigate the impact of higher dimension operators on the spectrum of scalar and tensor perturbations in the short-wavelength regime. In both cases, effective corrections at tree-level become important when the Hubble parameter is of the order of the Planck mass, or when the physical wave number of a cosmological perturbation mode approaches the square of the Planck mass divided by the Hubble constant. Thus, the cut-off length below which conventional cosmological perturbation theory does not apply is likely to be much smaller than the Planck length. This has implications for the observability of "trans-Planckian" effects in the spectrum of primordial perturbations.

25 pages, uses FeynMP

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Cited by in corpus (13)

• On the Issue of the ζSeries Convergence and Loop Corrections in the Generation of Observable Primordial Non-Gaussianity in Slow-Roll Inflation. Part I: the Bispectrum
• A parton picture of de Sitter space during slow-roll inflation
• Tackling Higher Derivative Ghosts with the Euclidean Path Integral
• On the Issue of the ζSeries Convergence and Loop Corrections in the Generation of Observable Primordial Non-Gaussianity in Slow-Roll Inflation. Part II: the Trispectrum
• Inflation in Motion: Unitarity Constraints in Effective Field Theories with Broken Lorentz Symmetry
• Inflation with a Weyl term, or ghosts at work
• Aether Unleashed
• Quantum Stress Tensor Fluctuations of a Conformal Field and Inflationary Cosmology
• The structure of correlation functions in single field inflation
• Tensor ghosts in the inflationary cosmology
• Chiral primordial gravitational waves in extended theories of Scalar-Tensor gravity
• Non-gaussianity and Statistical Anisotropy in Cosmological Inflationary Models
• Propagation of tensor perturbation in Horndeski-like gravity