No Arabic abstract
The celebrated Weinberg theorem in cosmological perturbation theory states that there always exist two adiabatic scalar modes in which the comoving curvature perturbation is conserved on super-horizon scales. In particular, when the perturbations are generated from a single source, such as in single field models of inflation, both of the two allowed independent solutions are adiabatic and conserved on super-horizon scales. There are few known examples in literature which violate this theorem. We revisit the theorem and specify the loopholes in some technical assumptions which violate the theorem in models of non-attractor inflation, fluid inflation, solid inflation and in the model of pseudo conformal universe.
The space of inflationary models is vast, containing wide varieties of mechanisms, symmetries, and spectra of particles. Consequently, the space of observational signatures is similarly complex. Hence, it is natural to look for boundaries of the space of models and their signatures. In this paper, we explore the possible symmetries associated with the primordial cosmological perturbations and their correlators in the asymptotic future. Assuming the observed homogeneity, isotropy and (approximate) scale invariance, we prove three main results. First, correlation functions of scalar metric fluctuations are uniquely characterized by soft theorems and are free from ambiguity under field redefinitions. Second, whatever the particle content and interactions, when the standard soft theorems apply, invariance under de Sitter boosts (linearly realized conformal invariance) is only possible if all connected correlators vanish identically, i.e. if the theory is free. Third, conformal invariance is the largest set of linearly realized (bosonic) symmetries of the correlators of any single scalar, irrespectively of any soft theorems or particle content.
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 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.
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.
We derive consistency relations for correlators of scalar cosmological perturbations which hold in the squeezed limit in which one or more of the external momenta become soft. Our results are formulated as relations between suitably defined one-particle irreducible N-point and (N-1)-point functions that follow from residual spatial conformal diffeomorphisms of the unitary gauge Lagrangian. As such, some of these relations are exact to all orders in perturbation theory, and do not rely on approximate deSitter invariance or other dynamical assumptions (e.g., properties of the operator product expansion or the behavior of modes at horizon crossing). The consistency relations apply model-independently to cosmological scenarios where the time evolution is driven by a single scalar field. Besides reproducing the known results for single-field inflation in the slow roll limit, we verify that our consistency relations hold more generally, for instance in ghost condensate models in flat space. We comment on possible extensions of our results to multi-field models.