Inflationary Scalars Don't Affect Gravitons at One Loop

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that infrared, massless scalars produced during inflation do not influence graviton propagation at one loop, providing insights into quantum corrections in inflationary cosmology.

Contribution

It presents a fully renormalized calculation showing scalars' negligible effect on gravitons at one loop, and proposes a conjecture for the graviton vacuum state correction.

Findings

Scalars have no effect on dynamical gravitons at one loop.

Supports a conjecture for the graviton vacuum state correction.

Comments on potential effects from inflationary gravitons.

Abstract

Primordial inflation results in the production of a vast ensemble of highly infrared, massless, minimally coupled scalars. We use a recent fully renormalized computation of the one loop contribution to the graviton self-energy from these scalars to show that they have no effect on the propagation of dynamical gravitons. Our computation motivates a conjecture for the first correction to the vacuum state wave functional of gravitons. We comment as well on performing the same analysis for the more interesting contribution from inflationary gravitons, and on inferring one loop corrections to the force of gravity.