Cosmology is not a Renormalization Group Flow

Abstract

A critical examination is made of two simple implementations of the idea that cosmology can be viewed as a renormalization group flow. Both implementations are shown to fail when applied to a massless, minimally coupled scalar with a quartic self-interaction on a locally de Sitter background. Cosmological evolution in this model is not driven by any RG screening of couplings but rather by inflationary particle production gradually filling an initially empty universe with a sea of long wavelength scalars.

4 pages, no figures, uses revtex4, version 2 revised slightly for publication in Physical Review Letters

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• Testing Inflationary Cosmology