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arXiv · 2606.07467

Stochastic scalar-tensor inflation and beyond

Yoann Launay
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Abstract

During cosmological inflation, inhomogeneities arising from quantum vacuum fluctuations are stretched to become super-Hubble and effectively classical. As many scenarios of the origin involve nonlinearities or a breakdown of perturbativity in the infrared, the limitations of quantum field theory can be addressed using a stochastic description of the dynamics, the so-called stochastic inflation paradigm. However, the stochastic formalism was only recently formulated consistently within full General Relativity and has not yet been extended to more general theories of the early universe, which is the subject of this work. In order to find the stochastic sources for a wide class of fully nonlinear scalar-tensor theories, we apply our gauge-agnostic coarse-graining procedure to the linear equations of the effective field theory of dark energy. Each theory can then be mapped to its own set of stochastic equations of motion by identifying the corresponding coefficients in the EFT. We illustrate this with a few concrete and, in most cases, unprecedented examples, including Gauss-Bonnet, generalized Brans-Dicke, Horndeski, and braiding theories. Finally, we discuss other natural extensions to provide a phenomenologically complete stochastic framework. For example, we showcase the coarse-graining of multifield inflation in full General Relativity and argue for the generality of our procedure and thus its potential applications beyond the realm of inflation.

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Yoann Launay. 2026-06-05. Stochastic scalar-tensor inflation and beyond. https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.07467

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