Resolving the Inflationary Power Spectrum

Abstract

Recently there have been differing viewpoints on how to evaluate the curvature power spectrum generated during inflation. In a series of papers by some authors it has been argued that the renormalization scheme adopted for the inflaton field phi(x) to make finite should also be applied to |phi_k|^2. But this then modifies the curvature power spectrum in a non-trivial way. On the other hand, others have criticized this approach and suggested alternatives, which have been further countered by the original authors. We discuss these differing viewpoints and indicate inconsistencies in both approaches. We then resolve the issue by showing why the standard expression, without any non-trivial regularization, is still valid.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of The 10th International Symposium on Cosmology and Particle Astrophysics (CosPA2013