Initial Conditions in the Effective Field Theory of Inflation

TL;DR

This paper explores how initial conditions in the effective field theory of inflation can encode significant information about UV physics, potentially observable through non-Gaussianities, despite the degeneracy of models.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for understanding how initial conditions in inflationary EFTs retain information about UV physics and proposes a simple model satisfying these conditions.

Findings

Initial conditions can encode UV physics information.

Certain conditions preserve information at late times.

A simple initial condition model is proposed.

Abstract

Many different models of inflation give rise to the same effective field theory of the inflaton. While effective field theories in flat space provide little information about UV physics, we propose that in inflationary backgrounds a large amount of information can be encoded by the initial conditions of the effective theory. We identify conditions under which this information remains available at late times, e.g. through observation of non-Gaussianities, and introduce a simple model of initial conditions where these conditions are satisfied.