Propagator positivity bounds for cosmological correlators

Abstract

Using unitarity and causality, we derive an infinite tower of two-sided positivity bounds on the effective field theory coefficients which describe the propagation of heavy fields on de Sitter spacetime. We design this EFT to describe propagators with the in-in boundary conditions that are relevant for cosmological correlators. Our positivity bounds therefore identify EFT correlators that can never emerge from a consistent underlying model of inflation. This implies non-trivial constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity; for instance the cosmological collider oscillations in the squeezed bispectrum from the exchange of a heavy scalar are tied to the shape of its EFT background.

18 pages, 3 figures. v2: updated to match published version