Journal of High Energy Physics (Apr 2023)

Cosmological Perturbations in Double Field Theory

  • Olaf Hohm,
  • Allison F. Pinto

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP04(2023)073
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2023, no. 4
pp. 1 – 35

Abstract

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Abstract We explore perturbative double field theory about time-dependent (cosmological) backgrounds to cubic order. To this order the theory is consistent in a weakly constrained sense, so that for a toroidal geometry it encodes both momentum and genuine winding modes. We give a self-contained discussion of the consistency problems and their resolution, including the role of cocycle factors and the O(d, d, ℤ) duality. Finally, as a first step toward the computation of cosmological correlation functions, we propose a generalized scalar-vector-tensor decomposition and use it to construct gauge invariant generalized Bardeen variables. Compared to standard cosmology there are fewer tensor modes but more vector and scalar modes.

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