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Register a new userGauge invariant cosmological perturbations for the nonminimally coupled inflaton field
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We construct the gauge invariant free action for cosmological perturbations for the nonminimally coupled inflaton field in the Jordan frame. For this the phase space formalism is used, which keeps track of all the dynamical and constraint fields. We perform explicit conformal transformations to demonstrate the physical equivalence between the Jordan and Einstein frames at the level of quadratic perturbations. We show how to generalize the formalism to the case of a more complicated scalar sector with an internal symmetry, such as Higgs inflation. This work represents a first step in developing gauge invariant perturbation theory for nonminimally coupled inflationary models.
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In second order perturbation theory different definitions are known of gauge invariant perturbations in single field inflationary models. Consequently the corresponding gauge invariant cubic actions do not have the same form. Here we show that the cubic action for one choice of gauge invariant variables is unique in the following sense: the action for any other, non-linearly related variable can be brought to the same bulk action, plus additional boundary terms. These boundary terms correspond to the choice of hypersurface and generate extra, disconnected contributions to the bispectrum. We also discuss uniqueness of the action with respect to conformal frames. When expressed in terms of the gauge invariant curvature perturbation on uniform field hypersurfaces the action for cosmological perturbations has a unique form, independent of the original Einstein or Jordan frame. Crucial is that the gauge invariant comoving curvature perturbation is frame independent, which makes it extremely helpful in showing the quantum equivalence of the two frames, and therefore in calculating quantum effects in nonminimally coupled theories such as Higss inflation.
We investigate cosmological perturbations of scalar-tensor theories in Palatini formalism. First we introduce an action where the Ricci scalar is conformally coupled to a function of a scalar field and its kinetic term and there is also a k-essence term consisting of the scalar and its kinetic term. This action has three frames that are equivalent to one another: the original Jordan frame, the Einstein frame where the metric is redefined, and the Riemann frame where the connection is redefined. For the first time in the literature, we calculate the quadratic action and the sound speed of scalar and tensor perturbations in three different frames and show explicitly that they coincide. Furthermore, we show that for such action the sound speed of gravitational waves is unity. Thus, this model serves as dark energy as well as an inflaton even though the presence of the dependence of the kinetic term of a scalar field in the non-minimal coupling, different from the case in metric formalism. We then proceed to construct the L3 action called Galileon terms in Palatini formalism and compute its perturbations. We found that there are essentially 10 different(inequivalent) definitions in Palatini formalism for a given Galileon term in metric formalism. We also see that,in general, the L3 terms have a ghost due to Ostrogradsky instability and the sound speed of gravitational waves could potentially deviate from unity, in sharp contrast with the case of metric formalism. Interestingly, once we eliminate such a ghost, the sound speed of gravitational waves also becomes unity. Thus, the ghost-free L3 terms in Palatini formalism can still serve as dark energy as well as an inflaton, like the case in metric formalism.
We calculate the entanglement entropy of scalar perturbations due to gravitational non-linearities present in any model of canonically-coupled, single-field ekpyrosis. Specifically, we focus on a recent model of improved ekpyrosis which is able to generate a scale-invariant power spectrum of curvature perturbations and gravitational waves as well as have a non-singular bounce due to an S-brane at the end of ekpyrotic contraction. By requiring that the entanglement entropy remians subdominant to the thermal entropy produced during reheating, we get an upper bound on the energy scale of the bounce.
It was recently proposed that a field theory cannot be consistent with quantum gravity if it allows a mode shorter than the Planck length to exit the Hubble horizon. This is called the Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC). We discuss the implications of the TCC on the possible shape of the inflaton potential in single-field slow-roll inflation. We point out that (1) there is generically an initial condition in which the total e-folding number $N_text{total}$ is doubled or more compared to the e-folds necessary for the cosmic microwave background fluctuations, and (2) a sizable negative running of spectral index is generically expected to make $N_text{total}$ small. In concrete setups, we find a stringent constraint on the inflationary energy scale, $V_text{inf}^{1/4} < mathcal{O}(10) , text{TeV}$ with $r < mathcal{O}(10^{-50})$, and the running parameter is bounded above as $alpha_text{s} lesssim - 4 times 10^{-3}$.
We study linear cosmological perturbations in the ``healthy extension of Horava-Lifshitz gravity which has recently been analyzed cite{BPS2}. We find that there are two degrees of freedom for scalar metric fluctuations, but that one of them decouples in the infrared limit. Also, for appropriate choices of the parameters defining the Lagrangian, the extra mode can be made well-behaved even in the ultraviolet.
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