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arXiv · 1910.14051

The Cosmological Bootstrap: Weight-Shifting Operators and Scalar Seeds

Daniel Baumann·Carlos Duaso Pueyo·Austin Joyce·Hayden Lee·Guilherme L. Pimentel
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Abstract

A key insight of the bootstrap approach to cosmological correlations is the fact that all correlators of slow-roll inflation can be reduced to a unique building block---the four-point function of conformally coupled scalars, arising from the exchange of a massive scalar. Correlators corresponding to the exchange of particles with spin are then obtained by applying a spin-raising operator to the scalar-exchange solution. Similarly, the correlators of massless external fields can be derived by acting with a suitable weight-raising operator. In this paper, we present a systematic and highly streamlined derivation of these operators (and their generalizations) using tools of conformal field theory. Our results greatly simplify the theoretical foundations of the cosmological bootstrap program.

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Daniel Baumann, Carlos Duaso Pueyo, Austin Joyce, Hayden Lee, Guilherme L. Pimentel. 2020-08-12. The Cosmological Bootstrap: Weight-Shifting Operators and Scalar Seeds. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep12(2020)204

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