On counterterms in cosmological perturbation theory

Gaurav Goswami

Published 2013-07-17, updated 2014-01-13Version 2

Cosmological perturbation theory is the theory of fluctuations (scalar as well as tensor) around the inflationary cosmological background solution. It is important to understand the details of the process of renormalization in this theory. In more familiar applications of quantum field theory, the dependence on the external momenta of the dimensionally regulated expression of the one-loop contribution to a correlator determines the number of counter terms (and their forms) required to renormalize it. In this work, it is pointed out that in cosmological perturbation theory, though this still happens, it happens in a completely different way such that in the late time limit, the information about the number and forms of counter terms required gets erased. This is to be compared with what happens in spontaneous symmetry breaking where the use of fluctuation fields around a chosen vacuum seems to suggest that more counter terms shall be needed to renormalize the theory than are actually required. We also comment on how the field strength of curvature perturbation, $\zeta$, could get renormalized.