In single clock models of inflation the coupling between modes of very
different scales does not have any significant dynamical effect during
inflation. It leads to interesting projection effects. Larger and smaller modes
change the relation between the scale a mode of interest will appear in the
post-inflationary universe and will also change the time of horizon crossing of
that mode. We argue that there are no infrared projection effects in physical
questions, that there are no effects from modes of longer wavelength than the
one of interest. These potential effects cancel when computing fluctuations as
a function of physically measurable scales. Modes on scales smaller than the
one of interest change the mapping between horizon crossing time and scale. The
correction to the mapping computed in the absence of fluctuations is enhanced
by a factor N_e, the number of e-folds of inflation between horizon crossing
and reheating. The new mapping is stochastic in nature but its variance is not
enhanced by N_e.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure; v2: JHEP published version, added minor comments
and reference