2012/11/23 by Ishan Mata, Suvrat Raju, Sandip P. Trivedi +1 · 153 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Conformal anomaly #Conformal field theory #Conformal group #Conformal map #Conformal symmetry #Cosmic microwave background #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark energy #De Sitter space #De Sitter universe #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Geometry #Homogeneous space #Inflation (cosmology) #Inflationary epoch #Inflaton #Invariant (physics) #Mathematical physics #Metric expansion of space #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Scalar (mathematics) #Scalar field #Theoretical physics #Universe #astro-ph.CO #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/jhep07(2013)015
published in Journal of High Energy Physics 2013(7) (Springer Nature) · 46 pages
arxiv created 2012/11/23 · openalex publication_date 2013/07/01 · arxiv updated 2013/10/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
During inflation, spacetime is approximately described by de Sitter space which is conformally invariant with the symmetry group SO(1,4). This symmetry can significantly constrain the quantum perturbations which arise in the inflationary epoch. We consider a general situation of single field inflation and show that the three point function involving two scalar modes and one tensor mode is uniquely determined, up to small corrections, by the conformal symmetries. Special conformal transformations play an important role in our analysis. Our result applies only to models where the inflaton sector also approximately preserves the full conformal group and shows that this three point function is a good way to test if special conformal invariance was preserved during inflation.