A consistent formulation of stochastic inflation I: Non-Markovian effects and issues beyond linear perturbations
We investigate the origin of non-Markovianity in stochastic inflation and its implications for nonlinear perturbation theory. In the Schwinger--Keldysh formulation, the noise terms sourcing the infrared (IR) Langevin equations are determined by ultraviolet (UV) modes evolving on top of the stochastic IR background. Since the UV-mode evolution generally depends on the past history of the IR sector, the resulting stochastic dynamics is intrinsically non-Markovian. Working perturbatively, we derive the UV-mode solutions up to second order and decompose the corresponding noise contributions into two parts. The first is a ``deterministic'' contribution, generated by the functional Taylor expansion of the first-order UV solution around the background trajectory. The second is a genuinely ``stochastic'' contribution, originating from terms in the UV-mode equations that are quadratic in the noise variables and are usually neglected in the standard formulation of stochastic inflation. Under this conventional truncation, the deterministic contribution reduces to a Markovian correction in attractor backgrounds, whereas it could become history dependent in non-attractor phases and gives rise to non-Markovian terms involving integrals over first-order IR perturbations. We finally show that the stochastic contribution is of the same perturbative order as the deterministic one, which indicate that the conventional truncation is generically inconsistent and quadratic-noise terms may be required for a consistent treatment of nonlinear perturbations in stochastic inflation. Our analysis clarifies the perturbative structure of non-Markovianity and provides the basis for a systematic treatment of quadratic-noise effects beyond the standard formulation.