Inflation and deformation of conformal field theory

Abstract

It has recently been suggested that a strongly coupled phase of inflation may be described holographically in terms of a weakly coupled quantum field theory (QFT). Here, we explore the possibility that the wave function of an inflationary universe may be given by the partition function of a boundary QFT. We consider the case when the field theory is a small deformation of a conformal field theory (CFT), by the addition of a relevant operator O, and calculate the primordial spectrum predicted in the corresponding holographic inflation scenario. Using the Ward-Takahashi identity associated with Weyl rescalings, we derive a simple relation between correlators of the curvature perturbation and correlators of the deformation operator O at the boundary. This is done without specifying the bulk theory of gravitation, so that the result would also apply to cases where the bulk dynamics is strongly coupled. We comment on the validity of the Suyama-Yamaguchi inequality, relating the bi-spectrum and tri-spectrum of the curvature perturbation.