The cosmological vacuum ambiguity, effective actions, and transplanckian effects in inflation

TL;DR

This paper develops an effective field theory approach to the vacuum ambiguity in inflation, showing how high-energy physics influences the power spectrum of density perturbations through boundary conditions and irrelevant operators.

Contribution

It introduces a Lagrangian framework for parametrizing vacuum choices and derives the leading high-energy corrections to inflationary power spectra.

Findings

Boundary conditions affect the inflationary power spectrum.

High-energy physics induces observable corrections proportional to H and 1/M.

Known vacua like Bunch-Davies are consistent within this framework.

Abstract

We provide a prescription for parametrizing the vacuum choice ambiguity in cosmological settings. We introduce an arbitrary boundary action representing the initial conditions. A Lagrangian description is moreover the natural setting to study decoupling of high-energy physics. RG flow affects the boundary interactions. As a consequence the boundary conditions are sensitive to high-energy physics through irrelevant terms in the boundary action. Using scalar field theory as an example, we derive the leading dimension four irrelevant boundary operators. We discuss how the known vacuum choices, e.g. the Bunch-Davies vacuum, appear in the Lagrangian description and square with decoupling. For all choices of boundary conditions encoded by relevant boundary operators, of which the known ones are a subset, backreaction is under control. All, moreover, will generically feel the influence of high-energy physics through irrelevant (dimension four) boundary corrections. Having established a coherent effective field theory framework including the vacuum choice ambiguity, we derive an explicit expression for the power spectrum of inflationary density perturbations including the leading high energy corrections. In accordance with the dimensionality of the leading irrelevant operators, the effect of high energy physics is linearly proportional to the Hubble radius H and the scale of new physics l = 1/M. Effects of such strength are potentially observable in future measurements of the cosmic microwave background.