Initial Conditions in the Effective Field Theory of Inflation

Abstract

Many different models of inflation give rise to the same effective field theory of the inflaton. While effective field theories in flat space provide little information about UV physics, we propose that in inflationary backgrounds a large amount of information can be encoded by the initial conditions of the effective theory. We identify conditions under which this information remains available at late times, e.g. through observation of non-Gaussianities, and introduce a simple model of initial conditions where these conditions are satisfied.