Abstract
We compute the universal generic corrections to the inflationary power spectrum due to unknown high-energy physics. We arrive at this result via a careful integrating out of massive fields in the “in-in” formalism yielding a consistent and predictive low-energy effective description in time-dependent backgrounds. We find that the power spectrum is universally modified at order , where is the scale of inflation. This is qualitatively different from the universal corrections in time-independent backgrounds, and it suggests that such effects may be present in upcoming cosmological observations.
- Received 27 July 2010
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.111301
© 2012 American Physical Society