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Soft de Sitter Effective Theory

10 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.

10 Pith papers citing it
abstract

Calculating the quantum evolution of a de Sitter universe on superhorizon scales is notoriously difficult. To address this challenge, we introduce the Soft de Sitter Effective Theory (SdSET). This framework holds for superhorizon modes whose comoving momentum is far below the UV scale, which is set by the inverse comoving horizon. The SdSET is formulated using the same approach that yields the Heavy Quark Effective Theory. The degrees of freedom that capture the long wavelength dynamics are identified with the growing and decaying solutions to the equations of motion. The operator expansion is organized using a power counting scheme, and loops can be regulated while respecting the low energy symmetries. For massive quantum fields in a fixed de Sitter background, power counting implies that all interactions beyond the horizon are irrelevant. Alternatively, if the fields are very light, the leading interactions are at most marginal, and resumming the associated logarithms using (dynamical) renormalization group techniques yields the evolution equation for canonical stochastic inflation. The SdSET is also applicable to models where gravity is dynamical, including inflation. In this case, diffeomorphism invariance ensures that all interactions are irrelevant, trivially implying the all-orders conservation of adiabatic density fluctuations and gravitational waves. We briefly touch on the application to slow-roll eternal inflation by identifying novel relevant operators. This work serves to demystify many aspects of perturbation theory outside the horizon, and has a variety of applications to problems of cosmological interest.

citation-role summary

background 3 method 1

citation-polarity summary

years

2026 8 2025 2

representative citing papers

Stochastic inflation from a non-equilibrium renormalization group

hep-th · 2026-05-11 · conditional · novelty 7.0

Stochastic inflation is the leading infrared limit of a coarse-grained Schwinger–Keldysh effective theory, and the same Fokker–Planck dynamics follows from a Polchinski-type renormalization-group flow for the reduced density matrix.

Unitary and Analytic Renormalisation of Cosmological Correlators

hep-th · 2025-09-02 · unverdicted · novelty 7.0

Different dimensional regularization schemes agree with each other and with unitarity; new analytic eta regulators simplify the work and fix the imaginary part of one-loop coefficients by the logarithmic running of the real part under scale invariance and Bunch-Davies conditions.

A Compact Story of Positivity in de Sitter

hep-th · 2025-08-11 · unverdicted · novelty 5.0

Compares two methods to resolve disagreements and prove positivity of anomalous dimensions for principal series fields coupled to compact scalar operators in de Sitter space.

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