A (semi)-exact Hamiltonian for the curvature perturbation $\zeta$

TL;DR

This paper develops a semi-exact Hamiltonian formulation for the curvature perturbation e in inflationary cosmology, enabling precise analysis of its dynamics and interactions with tensor modes, especially at long wavelengths and late times.

Contribution

The authors reorganize the Hamiltonian expansion around a classical solution to derive an explicit all-order action for e, with exact treatment of the curvature perturbation and perturbative handling of tensor modes.

Findings

Derived an explicit all-order action for e.

Identified conditions for logarithmic time dependence in e evolution.

Obtained simple classical solutions for the e zero-mode.

Abstract

The total Hamiltonian in general relativity, which involves the first class Hamiltonian and momentum constraints, weakly vanishes. However, when the action is expanded around a classical solution as in the case of a single scalar field inflationary model, there appears a non-vanishing Hamiltonian and additional first class constraints; but this time the theory becomes perturbative in the number of fluctuation fields. We show that one can reorganize this expansion and solve the Hamiltonian constraint exactly, which yield an explicit all order action. On the other hand, the momentum constraint can be solved perturbatively in the tensor modes $\gamma_{ij}$ by still keeping the curvature perturbation $\zeta$ dependence exact. In this way, after gauge fixing, one can obtain a semi-exact Hamiltonian for $\zeta$ which only gets corrections from the interactions with the tensor modes (hence the Hamiltonian becomes exact when the tensor perturbations set to zero). The equations of motion clearly exhibit when the evolution of $\zeta$ involves a logarithmic time dependence, which is a subtle point that has been debated in the literature. We discuss the long wavelength and late time limits, and obtain some simple but non-trivial classical solutions of the $\zeta$ zero-mode.