Squeezed States in the de Sitter Vacuum

Abstract

We discuss the treatment of squeezed states as excitations in the Euclidean vacuum of de Sitter space. A comparison with the treatment of these states as candidate no-particle states, or alpha-vacua, shows important differences already in the free theory. At the interacting level alpha-vacua are inconsistent, but squeezed state excitations seem perfectly acceptable. Indeed, matrix elements can be renormalized in the excited states using precisely the standard local counterterms of the Euclidean vacuum. Implications for inflationary scenarios in cosmology are discussed.