2013/07/31 by Gaurav Goswami · 2 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Classical mechanics #Cosmological perturbation theory #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Curvature #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Inflation (cosmology) #Mathematical physics #Mathematics #Perturbation (astronomy) #Perturbation theory (quantum mechanics) #Physics #Quantum #Quantum field theory #Quantum fluctuation #Quantum gravity #Quantum mechanics #Renormalization #Scalar field theory #Theoretical physics #astro-ph.CO #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.89.023504
published in Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields 89(2) (American Physical Society) · 8 pages; The version submitted to (and accepted by) PRD
openalex publication_date 2014/01/09 · arxiv created 2014/01/13 · arxiv updated 2014/01/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Cosmological perturbation theory is the theory of fluctuations (scalar as well as tensor) around the inflationary cosmological background solution. It is important to understand the details of the process of renormalization in this theory. In more familiar applications of quantum field theory, the dependence on the external momenta of the dimensionally regulated expression of the one-loop contribution to a correlator determines the number of counterterms (and their forms) required to renormalize it. In this work, it is pointed out that in cosmological perturbation theory, though this still happens, it happens in a completely different way such that in the late time limit, the information about the number and forms of counterterms required gets erased. This is to be compared with what happens in spontaneous symmetry breaking where the use of fluctuation fields around a chosen vacuum seems to suggest that more counterterms are needed to renormalize the theory than are actually required. We also comment on how the field strength of curvature perturbation, \ensuremathζ, could get renormalized.