Self Regulation of Infrared Correlations for Massless Scalar Fields during Inflation

May, 2011
16 pages
Published in:
  • Phys.Rev.D 84 (2011) 063516
e-Print:
Report number:
  • TTK-11-14

Citations per year

2011201420172020202302468101214
Abstract: (arXiv)
Self-energies of a minimally coupled scalar field with quartic and trilinear interactions are calculated in a de Sitter background, using a position space propagator. For quartic interactions, we recover earlier results for the seagull diagram, namely that it contributes an effective mass for the scalar field at leading order in the infrared enhancement in a steady-state de Sitter background. We further show that the sunset diagram also contributes to this effective mass and argue that these two contributions are sufficient in order to determine a self-consistent dynamical mass. In addition, trilinear interactions also induce a dynamical mass for the scalar field which we calculate. Since an interacting scalar field in de Sitter acquires a dynamical mass through these loop corrections, the infrared divergences of the two-point correlator are naturally self-regulated.
Note:
  • 16 pages, 4 figures
  • 98.80.Cq
  • 04.62.+v
  • field theory: scalar
  • background: de Sitter
  • coupling: scalar
  • coupling: minimal
  • higher-order: 1
  • propagator
  • correlation function
  • infrared problem